Harvard Students, HEI Hotel Workers Score Mutual Victory

​“One thing our hotel is notorious for is its unclear descriptions of jobs,” Nichols said. ​“We have job descriptions, but they also say that the job includes anything else management decides. They’ve cut so many people you’re left doing six or seven jobs. It can be exhausting and frustrating.” Compared to her previous hotel job, the pay is low: $13.75 an hour vs. $16 an hour at a locally owned hotel. And compared to the previous management under Hilton, Rosa said, raises are rare and skimpy. Nichols can’t afford the insurance, she said, nor her uninsured medical expenses. ​“I have a serious illness,” she said. ​“I have to spend $400 a month on medicine, but I can’t afford it, so I’m continually tired, sick, bleeding and dizzy. It’s frustrating and debilitating.”

Adding to the misery, at first she was hired part-time, then shifted to 40 hours without any benefits of full-time work, and now her hours of work fluctuate. ​“They play games,” she said about her supervisors, who play ​“power trips” with workers and ignore them or speak rudely to them. ​“They just don’t care — don’t care if service is good, don’t care if employees are happy.”

Back at Harvard, students met HEI workers and learned about both their lives and the university’s involvement as part owner.

​“There’s a hotel down the road, Le Meridien, and Harvard owns more than 10 percent,” Lockwood, a sophomore who just recently became involved with SLAM, said. ​“The working conditions are horrific. One man who worked in the kitchen, his hours were so badly scheduled he would have to leave his child around seven years old home alone. These are people’s lives, and as students we’re implicated in what the university does. It’s time for Harvard to live up to its responsibilities.”

That’s the gist of the message Lockwood delivered to Harvard President Drew Faust on March 26, when she signed up for the once-a-semester opportunity for students to talk with the school’s leader. She was so nervous she remembers few details of the meeting, except that Faust was ​“diplomatic,” and that as Lockwood left, she gave the president her pin with a slash mark through HEI.

On March 31, Faust’s assistant sent her an e-mail that Harvard Management Company decided not to invest in HEI in the future, a big blow to the private equity firm’s anticipated solicitation of a new round of funds this year. Unlike authorities at Brown, however, which linked its decision not to invest further to HEI labor practices, Harvard said its decision was based on HEI’s portfolio and strategy, ​“not on concerns about HEI’s practices.”

The same day Lockwood met with Faust, Lee joined with a delegation of HEI workers, who presented a petition for a fair process of union recognition signed by more than 70 percent of Le Meridien workers.

A senior who had been involved with SLAM for three years and had learned how working together students could make the world better, Lee was surprised at how the hotel manager treated the employees and the ​“power inequalities” in the workplace. At first the manager retreated into his office, then made some phone calls, and came back out but refused to accept the petitions, all the while acting ​“very confrontational.”

​“The workers feel empowered and inspired by the actions students are willing to take,” says Leigh Shelton, a researcher with UNITE HERE on the HEI campaign. ​“It helps them keep going to know they have the support and a point of pressure.”

HEI may be feeling pressure not only from the withdrawal of its major investors but also from dozens of wage and hour violations and complaints from the National Labor Relations Board. UNITE HERE is increasing the number of hotels being organized and bargaining at a Hollywood HEI property, where local economic development regulations kept management neutral. And more campaigns are developing at universities like Michigan, Notre Dame and Chicago, says UNITE HERE researcher Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer.

​“In this country, the first thing is the money,” housekeeper Rosa said of the latest campus interruption of investment flowing to HEI. ​“So a shift in investment could make the difference. Hopefully, by getting the money out, it will help the workers to change things.” And that’s what both the workers and students want.