<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Dear All,<br><br></div>A recent reorganization in Harvard's University Financial Services (UFS) has ended with discriminatory terminations. During <a href="http://www.perspy.com/?p=1072" target="_blank">a hellish six month "transition" period</a>,
employees endured constant threats that they would be laid off if they
did not process invoices fast enough. The work was distributed
unfairly, and at times there was little to do. However administrators
kept up the harassment, eventually insisting that all the workers be at
or above the average rate of processing at least 75% of the time
(impossible for the group to achieve!). At the end of the "transition,"
three workers of color, all parents, were laid off, supposedly for "not
meeting productivity expectations." One came back from a disability
leave with a note from her doctor authorizing her return to work, only
to be told she was terminated instead. White workers with lower rates of
production, according to management's own statistics, all stayed
employed.
This sickening injustice has already sparked <a href="http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/2503" target="_blank">a picket on January 18</a>, one day after the last layoff, and <a href="http://iwwboston.org/2013/03/08/iww-supports-3713-action-against-racist-layoffs-at-harvard-university/" target="_blank">a larger action on March 7</a>.
Please join us Tuesday April 23, at 5 pm, as we gather in front
of Harvard's Holyoke Center, 1350 Mass Ave in Cambridge, next to Au Bon
Pain, steps from the Harvard Square Red Line T stop. Escalating protests will continue until the laid-off UFS workers get
justice! The Facebook event is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/133143180205726/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br><br></div><div>In Solidarity,<br><br></div><div>Geoff Carens, Union Rep, Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW/AFSCME Local 3650)<br>
</div>Delegate, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)<br>
<a href="http://www.iww.org/" target="_blank">http://www.iww.org/</a><div><br></div><br></div>