[act-ma] Thursday 5/24 11 a.m. No Layoffs Campaign @ Harvard's Commencement Exercises!!

[Geoff Carens]

Dear All,

Harvard University has been terrorizing workers, especially library staff,
for months. After proclamations from administrators that the library
workforce would shrink by "voluntary or involuntary" means, 65 library
employees just accepted a miserly early-retirement deal. The library
workforce is already nearly one-third smaller than it was in 2009, when
hundreds of Harvard workers lost their jobs. This was on top of a previous
wave of cuts in 2004.

Predictably, all the job losses and wiping out of institutional memory have
degraded library assistance and services. Minimally-trained, harried
students and short-term temps are pressed to take the places of the
experienced workers Harvard has kicked to the curb. 10,000 books (worth
about $370,000) were recently shipped to a remote warehouse with no
cataloging, meaning they are unlikely ever to be used. The online library
catalog is riddled with errors because management won't pay for staff to
adapt minimal bibliographic records or perform needed quality checks.

Despite months of
protests<http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/2/10/protest-library-layoffs/>
and
bad press<http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/3/2/labor-library-reorganization-protest/>,
Harvard refuses to back off from its library layoff threats. Campus workers
and our allies will not accept further job losses. Probably no one needs to
be reminded that Harvard is richer than Croesus and has no need to lay off
anyone! Please join rank & file members of the Harvard Union of Clerical
and Technical Workers as we demonstrate our determination and solidarity at
Harvard's Commencement Exercises, Thursday May 24, between 11 a.m. and 2
p.m. We will meet at Harvard's Holyoke Center (1350 Mass. Ave. Cambridge,
Harvard Square Red Line T). Please click
here<http://maps.yahoo.com/#q=1350+Massachusetts+Ave%2C+Cambridge%2C+MA+02138-3846&conf=1&start=1&lat=42.373039&lon=-71.118179&zoom=16&mvt=m&trf=0>
for
a map. Facebook users: you can RSVP to the event by clicking
here<http://www.facebook.com/events/242111025894172/>.
Feel free to forward this email everywhere!

In Solidarity,

Geoff Carens, Union Rep, HUCTW/AFSCME Local 3650
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