Latin@ workers fight harassment at Harvard

Fed up with racism in the workplace and threatened with layoffs, Latin@ workers at Harvard University are fighting back. Due to their organizing efforts and the active support of community groups, unions and Harvard students, the layoffs have been stopped temporarily.

The workers are animal technicians who care for laboratory animals and clean their cages. They are members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, an affiliate of AFSCME.

Harvard recently completed building a multi-million-dollar facility that expanded its Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB), but it notified four Latin@ workers at the beginning of October that they would be laid off in January.

Harvard claims that automation is behind the proposed layoffs, but the Latin@ workers have made it clear that the driving force is racism. All four workers have seniority. They state that six new employees were hired in the past few years and that rooms full of recently purchased animal equipment need people to staff them.

“Almost 70 percent of the workforce of animal technicians and cage washers in the MCB are Latin@,” Jaime Moreno told Workers World. “We are routinely passed over for job and education opportunities by Harvard management. We are told to speak only English in the workplace and are harassed and intimidated daily. The Latin@ workers are written up and humiliated for mistakes we make, mistakes that are ignored by management when made by white workers.”

Moreno is one of the four workers who were slated for layoff. The workers recounted to Workers World a particularly horrible incident where an employee, later promoted to management, sprayed “Fantastic” household cleaner on some of the Latin@ workers’ food and onto their clothes, saying she did not like the smell.

A flyer put out by the workers states, “We demand that Harvard immediately address the racist conditions for Latin@ workers at the Office of Animal Resources. It is appalling that a university of such worldwide stature as Harvard would allow such a climate to exist.”

Ed Childs, chief shop steward representing Harvard’s dining hall and kitchen workers, stated at a recent teach-in held to support the Latin@ MCB workers, “This is a struggle against institutional racism, which every major employer uses and every union must fight. Harvard not only uses racism but teaches it. Harvard is now expanding its teaching of biological determinism by hiring Professor Steven Pinker to train future capitalist corporate leaders in institutional racism.” Biological determinism has been used to claim the superiority of one race or sex over another.

Members of the Women’s Fightback Network, the International Action Center, Fuerza Latina, the Latino Men’s Collective, Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) and the Harvard Coalition for Respect and Equality for Workers (CREW) have been holding meetings, pickets, handing out flyers and gathering signatures on a petition to support the workers. On Dec. 7 they held a teach-in attended by 70 people, including nine animal technicians. CREW was formed in response to the animal techs’ struggle.

Rosa Norton, a junior at Harvard and member of SLAM and CREW, told Workers World, “The Latin@ workers are being discriminated against and Harvard is trying to cover it up. It is important that the rest of the student body knows this. We want to show the managers that the workers have a lot of support and that it is an issue that won’t go away.”

This solidarity has forced Harvard to rescind the layoffs, but only temporarily. The workers also won their demand to establish a joint union/management committee to investigate the layoffs and the racist environment at MCB.

Eckfeldt is a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.