“If you like it, keep it. If you don’t, leave.”
These words of coercion oft used to intimidate powerless employees by employers are very familiar to Delmy Lemus, a housekeeper at the DoubleTree Hotel in Allston, which Harvard bought back in 2005. According to Lemus, her employers threaten her and her coworkers with these words whenever they speak up against unfair working conditions.
Lemus has been working at the DoubleTree Hotel for the past five years. Although working conditions were tolerable when she first began the job, conditions began to decline after her first year and have continued to deteriorate ever since. Her employers verbally abuse her, having yelled at her to the point of making her cry several times. After the hotel cut down on employees, Lemus and one other housekeeper were required to complete job assignments that were originally designed for four to five workers. As a result, Lemus now performs extra duties, such as laundry and room requests, and is constantly rushing and running to complete her work. If she does not complete her daily tasks, she will receive a warning the next morning, and after three warnings, she will be fired. Due to such a burdensome workload, Lemus has suffered from several injuries from her work, including a broken nose, and now suffers from chronic back pain.
Even when Lemus was eight months pregnant a few years ago, her employer forced her to continue her job without aid, which included bending down to make beds and lifting heavy objects, such as cots and sofa beds. Once she started to experience contractions, Lemus asked to take leave for work. However, her employer accused her of lying about her due date, told her to work for at least one more week, and threatened her that she would lose her job if she did not return within three months. In face of such threats, Lemus took leave, and a few days later, gave birth to her daughter Arianna. Astonishingly, her job has continued to get worse since then. Lemus’ tragic story, however, is but one of many among the employees at the Harvard-owned DoubleTree Hotel.
The DoubleTree Campaign
Most, if not all, the employees at the DoubleTree Hotel in Allston at the hotel suffer from terrible working conditions, including but not limited to low wages, high accident rates, unaffordable health care, racial and gender discrimination, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment. In fact, according to a report titled “Harvard’s Hotel compared [sic] to the Harvard Community Standard,” 96 percent of surveyed workers said that their jobs had degraded over the past six years, while 84 percent said they could not imagine continuing to work there for the next 10 years. This is why Lemus decided to join the DoubleTree campaign. In an interview with the HPR, Lemus said, “I decided to get involved because if I don’t do something, then I will have to leave my job soon. Things are getting worse.”
There are more shocking statistics. One-hundred percent of surveyed room attendants stated they suffer from pain at home, which all of them agreed interferes with their other activities. Meanwhile, 78 percent do not view their workplace as a safe environment. Furthermore, the DoubleTree Hotel employees only earn 68 cents for every dollar that Harvard University Dining Services employees who have two or more years of work experience at the university do.
Such inhumane working conditions have fueled the DoubleTree campaign, a campaign run by Harvard’ Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) in concert with the employees at DoubleTree Hotel and the union with the purpose of fighting to establish fair process for employees at the hotel. According to abovementioned report, fair process is “an established, common agreement whereby the employer pledges not to retaliate while employees decide whether or not they would like to join a union.” While the DoubleTree campaign may appear to be like any other fair labor campaign run by SLAM, deeper examination suggests that the campaign is a unique one, involving a more critical role on the part of students, the hotel’s mixed status as property and an investment, and broader moral implications for Harvard’s role in the community.
A Brief History
At the beginning of last semester, SLAM helped organize a supermajority of workers at DoubleTree Hotel to sign a petition stating that they would like to establish fair process. On March 12, the workers presented the petition for fair process to the DoubleTree Hotel management. Afterwards, SLAM garnered approximately 600 petition signatures by Harvard students over the next two months. When presented to Harvard University President Drew Faust, however, the petition was rejected. On May 8, Harvard Human Resources sent a letter to the union Boston’s Local 26 expressing their refusal to establish fair process for DoubleTree employees.
In early November, SLAM published a report titled “Harvard’s Hotel compared to the Harvard Community Standard,” outlining the abuses DoubleTree Hotel workers suffer. SLAM plans to present the report to Faust, as well as distribute copies of the report in university dining halls and obtain more petition signatures from students. SLAM member Gabriel Bayard notes that SLAM plans to hold a forum involving workers, students, and professors to discuss the importance of the campaign. Several faculty members have expressed support for the campaign, including Marshall Ganz, a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Kirsten Weld, Assistant Professor of History at the College.
A Triangular Force
It is important to note the critical role students play in the campaign. While the Hilton manages the DoubleTree Hotel, Harvard owns it. As a result, even though the Hilton may face the brunt of pressure from workers, it cannot do anything without Harvard’s approval. Therefore, it does not matter that Hilton hotels in Boston have a history of saying yes to unions and workers regarding labor negotiations if Harvard is not persuaded to agree to establish fair process. According to a Hilton Worldwide spokesperson, Hilton is “committed to offering a workplace environment where our team members are treated fairly and with respect, including respecting the right of our team members to choose or not choose collective bargaining representation.”
Due to the unique circumstances, it is particularly important for students to get involved in the campaign and insist Harvard to protect workers’ rights. Pressure on the hotel by the workers and pressure on Harvard by the students are necessary components to the success of the campaign. In an interview with the HPR, Bayard said, “We think it’s exciting because there aren’t that many times that students are so central to a campaign like this, and this time students are. The workers could burn the hotel down and Harvard could say they don’t care. When students and workers fight together, we can really change things.”
SLAM member Preston Craig also notes the critical role that Harvard students can play in this campaign, in comparison with other campaigns SLAM is running. In an interview with the HPR, Craig noted, “[The DoubleTree Hotel] is something that is owned by Harvard, which is different than the other campaigns that SLAM is working on. As Harvard students, we both have the responsibility and a unique position to effect change. I think the main thing is that undergraduate students educate more people about the campaign and increase pressure on the administration.”
Fellow SLAM member, Lee Hittner-Cunningham, agrees with Craig. In an interview with the HPR, she stated, “The way we’re going to make progress isn’t just by workers doing demonstrations or boycotts. It’s about directly going to the owners. The administration has to respond to undergraduate complaints about things. If we have the undergraduate population mobilize to say they won’t tolerate treating workers this way, then Harvard can become a force for good and not accept the kind of conditions that the workers are subjected to.”
Thus, the effort required for the success of the DoubleTree Campaign can be seen as triangular. Pressure from all three sides—employees, the students, and the union—is critical to achieve fair process for the workers.
A Mixed Precedent
There is reason to be optimistic about the DoubleTree campaign. In December 2011, a similar labor union campaign that involved ownership by Harvard and management by another company occurred at the Harvard Law School (HLS) and ended up in success for SLAM. HLS dining services workers, who worked for Restaurant Associates, were non-union. About 90 percent signed a card saying they wanted a fair process, and two weeks later, Harvard agreed, providing the cafeteria workers the same contract as workers at the university dining halls. In the end, the workers voted to join Boston’s Local 26. Therefore, there is a clear precedent of Harvard agreeing to fair process for subcontracted workers who work for another company.
Yet, there is a complicating factor that may prevent the DoubleTree campaign’s mission from being quite as easily accomplished as that of the HLS cafeteria. This factor has to do with the location of the hotel, which ultimately affects the value of the hotel in Harvard’s self-interest. Examination of this issue sheds light on Harvard’s resistance to establishing fair process for the hotel employees. In one respect, Harvard’s purchase of DoubleTree Hotel can be seen as simply buying property for the university. Harvard makes approximately $20 million every year from the DoubleTree Hotel and the tax valuation for the property is between $50 and $100 million. Therefore, Harvard may be trying to maximize profits.
However, according to Bayard, the hotel is more like an investment in that Harvard has a master plan to make Allston its second campus; owning a large span of property like the hotel provides the university flexibility in its expansion plans. A quick cost-benefit analysis regarding the slight effect increasing wages would have on the $20 million revenue Harvard makes from the hotel, in contrast to the great improvement of worker productivity and hotel reputation that comes along with happier employees, can support this theory. It is not just about revenue; it is about investment.
Moral Implications
This investment aspect of the DoubleTree Hotel does not only have logistical, monetary repercussions. It has deeper moral implications. According to Bayard, “Harvard is being reticent. They’re afraid of allowing students to determine that their investments also have to be fair.”
This is where the DoubleTree campaign ties in with all of the other contemporary activist campaigns on campus, such as Divest Harvard led by Students for a Just and Sustainable Future and the efforts led by Responsible Investment at Harvard Coalition. Currently, the Harvard administration refuses to accept moral responsibility for its investments, in stark contrast to its normative statements of morality. For example, in President Drew Faust’s speech to launch Harvard’s $6.5 billion Capital Campaign, she asserted that Harvard’s legacy should be “as good as it is great.” In addition, in discussing employment at Harvard, the Vice President for Human Resources stated Harvard should build a “ community guided by shared values.”
Despite student efforts to steer Harvard away from unethical practices, the administration continues to refuse to acknowledge that investing money in certain companies or projects has vast ethical repercussions and that such great power inherently brings the burden of moral duty. Speaking to this moral responsibility, Bayard aptly illustrates the deep impact the DoubleTree Campaign can have in shaping Harvard’s attitude toward its investments: “What I think is really promising about this campaign is it opens the door that Harvard’s investments have an impact on Boston and the Harvard community. Our hope for future investments is that Harvard will recognize there is a responsibility to abide by certain principles, one being labor fairness. Thirty-two billion dollars has to go somewhere, and a lot of it goes to direct investments. We’re hoping that Harvard will realize these investments have a direct impact on the Harvard community and that it doesn’t come at expense to Harvard.”
Predicting the Future
Those involved in the campaign appear to be very confident about the impending success of the campaign. Bayard stated, “This will work. This will happen. I’m very confident. I think Harvard has little moral standing to say no to this. The workers have demonstrated that they are a part of the Harvard community. As such, they should be given the same rights as any of the other works in the dining halls. We think Drew Faust knows that.”
What’s the overall importance of this campaign? Lemus, perhaps, puts it in the most simple but accurate terms: “If you’re human, you can understand.” One of many activist campaigns on campus, the DoubleTree campaign proves critical in its exemplification of the importance of being humane and in the deep moral implications it has for humanity.
