harvard needs a living wage, testimony two:
I clean 8am to 4pm at MIT and then 6pm to 10pm at Harvard. I've been cleaning at Harvard about 5 years now. I came to Cambridge from Barbados in '83, and ever since I first come here, I was always working two full0time jobs. 80 hours a week. I always do cleaning. always liked cleaning. The thing lots of work places try to do now is they try to get away from paying a lot of full-time workers. They see if they can cut the staff in half and get the same quantity of work done. and then they want part-tie people, because then they don't have to pay the benefits. That's just like what Harvard do.
I leave my house at about 6:30 in the morning every weekday. and I don't get back until 10:30 at night, so that's a lot of time from home. Sometimes it's not enough sleep. Depends on how the body feels. In the morning, your body wants to sleep but your mind tells you, you got to go, you got to go. I have three kids - 4, 9, and 21. On the weekends, I do spend a lot of time with my kids. I try not ot give to myself, to improve my kids.
Harvard is great as far as school is concerned, but in our department, it's not great for working. We work for a company - Harvard is a company. Sometimes a name fools a lot of people. When you say Harvard or MIT, you have a great name, but when you see the environment and you seewhat's going on, you're not happy just to have a good name. When people hear you're working at Harvard, they think you get a ot of money because it's a big college. But as far as I'm concerned, the working environment is bad. Right now, one guy's out sick, nearly seven weeks and he didn't get a paycheck yet. Every day they tell him, it's in the mail. How long will it take a paycheck to go from one part of Cambridge to another? You have to work with the worker to make him happy in the environment he's working.
You have people who don't want to talk because they scared to lose their job, or scared the supervisor is going to put more work on them. And you get treated sometimes different depending on where you come from. The boss is no going to say, because you from Haiti, I don't like you. I give you more work, but his actions speak louder than words. The money here in Cambridge is better than in Barbados, but I didn't really come here from the money. I come here because my family lives in this country. My grandfather lived in this country from the time he was a boy, so he sent for my mother and she brought me here. I used to live in Cambridge with my grandfather, but now I live in Malden.
It's bettter at MIT, because MIT is a better environment than Harvard. Sometimes my supervisor here talks to me, live we were talking about how to clean this desk, and I tell him so and so and he said, If you don't like it, you can go home, meaning to quit. He just talk down to me, so sometimes I get so mad. MIT pays better than Harvard. Other placdes for part-time pay more money than Harvard. Harvard needs to pay a little bit more money, because they want the work done nice and clean. No specks. As I say, I don't mind that, but pay me something to do that.
I haven't gotten a good raise since I've been at Harvard. I still don't get $10/hour. They freeze our raises for three years. You never get enough money, but you try to live with that, and you try to make ends meet. I put my money togethter with my wife to pay the bills. But other guys whose wives don't work or who don't make a good salary at their other job, I know they have a hard time. Sometimes they don't have money to buy groceries. I know one individual that works here - sometimes he can't buy any meat because he's back on his rent. But we try to strive to be thankful. We can't do no more.
-- Neil, Law School Janitor