Harvard’s guards vote to accept a new three-year contract with the University.

Labor & Employee Relations agreed to reasonable increases in compensation levels for all security, museum, and parking workers.  But we couldn’t reach an agreement on two issues: (1) where the seventeen remaining security guards would be assigned; and (2) whether management would replace all of Harvard’s union security guards with temp workers.

These items became the subjects of impasse bargaining.  Management took the position that it needed a work-rule change so that it could transfer a guard to a different location without considering the guard’s qualifications, work record, or seniority.

We finally negotiated a settlement on August 28, 2003.  A number of guards will be assigned to mobile patrol duty at problem areas on campus.  The others will be assigned to static security positions at construction sites.  They’ll have relatively little contact with community members.  But we were able to reject management’s proposed alternative, which would have left the university community totally dependent on unscreened, untrained, underpaid temp workers—from a single agency.

[Harvard Univ. & Harvard Univ. Sec., Parking & Museum Guards Union, Agreement (2003).]