When Christina M. Tedesco received word about the pay cut last fall, her first reaction was, “Oh my God, I have to call my coworker Mark.”
Many of her colleagues at the Harvard Art Museums, where Tedesco works as an attendant, do not have computers or cannot access their work emails from home. She had to call them to break the news: Harvard had decided to cut their wages already the lowest of any union at the University by 30 percent, and she wasn’t sure for how long museum employees would continue to be paid at all.
Soon afterward, panic set in. “It’s very unsettling to not know if you really have a job or not, if the museum is going to lay you off in a few months,” Tedesco says. “It creates a constant environment of anxiety.”
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Contracted dining workers at two Harvard schools received welcome news this week as Harvard Medical School announced it would not pursue 16 layoffs as planned, and Harvard Law School announced it would continue paying contracted dining employees and eventually bring them in-house.
The University reduced support for employees covered by its emergency excused absence policy, which had sustained pay and benefits for all employees whose work had been suspended due to the pandemic, on Jan. 15. Idled contracted employees could no longer receive pay and direct employees could receive up to 70 percent of their pay, though continued application of the original policy was up to each Harvard school.