Striking Custodians Return to Work as Harvard and Union Resume Negotiations

 Striking Custodians Return to Work as Harvard and Union Resume Negotiations

 One-day strikes concluded; custodians return to posts without incident

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – All the custodians who participated in one-day strikes across Harvard University on Monday and Tuesday have now returned to work, and the workers’ bargaining committee has agreed to resume negotiations on contracts covering over 800 custodians who maintain dorms, classrooms, administrative centers and other buildings across Harvard.  As of Wednesday morning, management and the workers’ union, 32BJ SEIU, have agreed to meet in two bargaining sessions at Harvard, scheduled for later today and tomorrow.  Bargaining committee members are hopeful that the university will agree to a contract with a wage increase that will help them rise above the cost of living, protect their health benefits, and provide added protections to immigrant workers.

“I have been a cleaner at Harvard for 14 years, and I hope we will negotiate a strong contract that will allow me to continue here for many more years,” said Mario Arevalo, a custodian at Harvard Law School. “I was out on Harvard Yard with my coworkers on Monday, and the experience helped us grow even more determined to win a good contract.”

“We look forward to returning to the table to negotiate an agreement that lets these essential workers get ahead of the terrible affordability crisis that has hurt working people across the country,” said 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President Kevin Brown, who heads the union in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “The decision to call the strikes was our committee’s unanimous response to management’s intransigence last week, and we hope we can now move forward productively. We thank Cambridge City Councilors Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, Burhan Azeem, and Councilor-Elect Ayah Al-Zubi for joining us at the Harvard Business School campus yesterday. We thank the students who put together a petition that drew hundreds of supporting signatures literally overnight. And we thank the many members of various unions and student organizations who joined us in support over these past two days. I am extremely proud of the hundreds of 32BJ members who walked off their jobs for the day to send a clear message. Now, the bargaining committee will do everything we can to negotiate an agreement that improves conditions for hundreds of people whose importance to the world’s most renowned university is too often ignored, yet whose demand for dignity rang loud and clear over the last two days.”