How the Harvard Strike Fits Into the Equality Conversation

Dining-hall workers at Harvard University have been on strike for two weeks, and no sign of a resolution appears in sight. What might have been a simple labor dispute at another institution has become more contentious — and drawn more attention — thanks to Harvard’s elite reputation and enormous wealth.

The university faces a test of wills, and a problem of appearances: How does the richest university in the world negotiate with some of its lowest-paid workers?

Large strikes against colleges by nonacademic employees are rare but could become more common as the national discussion of inequality grows, and a new generation of activists, both workers and students, builds momentum on the issue.

Negotiations over a new employment contract began in May and continued over the summer. About 750 workers represented by Unite Here Local 26 went on strike on October 5 after the university rejected their demands for pay increases and stuck with plans to raise employee contributions for healthcare benefits. Harvard says that, at an average of nearly $22 per hour, its pay for dining-hall workers is among the best for such jobs in the region, and that skyrocketing health-care costs mean that some changes in its health benefits, and in worker contributions to those benefits, are needed.The university has proposed various steps, including delaying the increases until 2019, to mitigate any hardship caused by the rise in costs.

Strikers are walking picket lines at the university, and 11 were arrested for blocking traffic during a protest last week. Meanwhile, the university has closed six of its 14 dining halls. The remaining facilities are staffed in part with temporary workers. The university recently issued each student $25 worth of “Crimson Cash” to use at area restaurants in order to offer more “flexibility” to diners.

Many in the university community back the striking workers. More than 3,000 students signed a petition supporting the strike, according to Ted Waechter, a junior and a member of the Harvard Student Labor Action Movement, a student-activist group. About 400 students walked out of class in protest on Monday to attend a rally in support of the strike, he adds. Some alumni have signed a pledge not to donate to their alma mater and to instead divert any giving to the strike fund.

Sympathy for the workers may be heightened by Harvard’s status, says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial and labor relations and economics at Cornell University and director of its Higher Education Research Institute. “When you are one of the richest universities in the world, there’s a lot of pressure on you to treat employees well,” he says, especially since some classes of employees, such as professors, are treated “very well.” Assistant professors at Harvard made an average of $114,777 a year in 2014, compared with assistant professors at all four-year private colleges, who made an average of $65,851 that year, according to data supplied to The Chronicle.

Harvard says that it treats its dining-hall workers well. Its hourly pay exceeds both the City of Cambridge’s “living wage” of $15.04 and the average wages paid to other food-service workers organized by Unite Here in the region. It offers paid vacation and retirement benefits, even to some part-time workers. The university’s most-recent offer to the striking workers includes a raise in average pay to more than $24 an hour by the end of a four-year contract.

While Harvard’s offer to the union does raise employees’ contributions for health care, the university hasn’t increased the cost of benefits to dining-hall workers since 2008. Given the huge cost increases for health care that have been partially passed on to employees in virtually all industries over the past several years, that’s “pretty extraordinary,” says Andy Brantley, president of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

The union says that Harvard can, and should, do better. The proposed changes to health-care benefits would raise co-pays for prescriptions, emergency-room visits, and other medical services, and increase the financial burden on families who already struggle to make ends meet in one of the country’s most expensive metropolitan areas, according to Tiffany Ten Eyck, a spokeswoman for Unite Here. Since Harvard fully employs its dining-hall workers only during the academic year, an increase to a minimum annual pay of about $35,000 a year, from about $30,000 now, is essential, she says. (The university says that many dining-hall workers already make $35,000 with overtime.) And Harvard, with its $35.7 billion endowment, should be able to afford it. “Harvard crying broke does not move any dining-hall worker at this point,” says Ms. Ten Eyck.

Kerry Maiato, a father of two who has worked for Harvard University Dining Services for 13 years, says the university’s proposed increases in health-care costs are what keep him on the picket line every day. The changes could lead to hundreds of dollars of additional medical expenses every year. “It doesn’t seem like it would be a lot for someone who makes $70,000, but for someone who’s making less than $35,000, it’s huge,” he says. “It’s the difference between buying milk and cereal for your family.”

Walkouts on the Rise

The last strike at Harvard was in 1983 when dining-hall workers walked out for one day. Nearly 2,000 hourly workers went on strike for more than a month at Yale University in 2003. Janitors walked off their jobs at the University of Miami for more than two months in 2006. Such mass actions remain the exception.

But strikes, and strike talk, are becoming more common at universities. There have been faculty strikes and walkouts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, City College of San Francisco, and Green River College in the past year, says William A. Herbert, director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York. A strike among California State University faculty was narrowly avoided in the spring, while faculty at the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education were planning to go on strike on Wednesday after an apparent breakdown in contract negotiations.. There is an increase in union activity on campuses nationwide as well, Mr. Herbert says, as employees try to expand organizing to professors off the tenure track and to teaching and research assistants. A group of graduate students at Harvard will vote next month on forming a union.

Such activity coincides with increased attention to income inequality in American society. Food-services workers across the country have been advocating for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Employers nationwide are currently wrestling with how to put in place changes to federal rules that will make more salaried employees eligible for overtime pay, including at colleges. Disputes like the one between Harvard and its dining-hall workers are part of the same dialogue, says Kelsey H. Finn, president of the National Association of College Auxiliary Services. “You’re just seeing it play out in higher education.”

Ms. Finn says she isn’t surprised to hear that some Harvard students are supporting the strikers. Many members of the generation of students entering college now “want to be involved and make an impact,” she says, and “having care and concern for the staff at the university is a common theme.” They are also motivated by the fact that employees such as dining-hall workers “are critical to their experience on a college campus,” she says.

Mr. Waechter, the Harvard junior, agrees. “Our dining-hall workers really have made Harvard a home for us,” he says. He accuses the university of “putting money over the workers, and putting money over the student experience.” Since the strike began, many students have stopped eating in the dining halls, he says, “not as a political measure, but because the food options have really declined significantly.”

Harvard’s wealth may have a bearing on the outcome of negotiations. A federal mediator has gotten involved in the talks between the university and the union in hopes of reaching an agreement. Mr. Herbert, director of the labor research center at CUNY, says that the mediator will most likely hear the parties discuss Harvard’s ability to pay more to the workers when looking for a resolution.

Harvard’s finances may not be quite as robust as they appear, however. The university’s endowment lost $2 billion in value last year. Given the rules that many universities have, that may reduce its endowment spending for a year or two, says Mr. Ehrenberg of Cornell: “They may be very concerned about the financial issues.”

Tania deLurzuriaga, a spokeswoman for Harvard, wrote in an email that endowment funds are “largely restricted to specific academic purposes,” and the university anticipates “that we will most likely have to do some belt-tightening over the next few years due to the challenging financial environment currently impacting higher education.”

In the meantime, Harvard’s dining-hall workers “are struggling with basic bills right now, falling behind on mortgages, falling behind on rent,” says Ms. Ten Eyck, of Unite Here.

Mr. Maiato and his wife are among them. Both are employed by Harvard University Dining Services, so neither is working right now. They were expecting to receive their first allotment from the strike fund, but it will not be enough to replace both paychecks, and a trip to the grocery means bringing home only the daily necessities for now.

Mr. Maiato says he enjoys his job in Annenberg Dining Hall, but he’s disappointed in how the university’s offer would affect its workers. Harvard leads the way in so many things, he says. “Why couldn’t they lead the way in this?”

Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.