The recent contract agreement reached between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and OneSource falls far short of the standards to which Tufts professes to hold itself. The agreement, reached over the summer, is a modest improvement on the previous contract that had been in place for the service workers. It is not, however, a radical change from past contracts and it certainly does not put this university anywhere close to local peer institutions that directly employ their service staff.
The new agreement will raise hourly wages by fifty cents while introducing sick days, a benefit which previously did not exist. These sick days, however, will be hard to come by: First-year employees will receive one sick day while fourth-year employees will still receive only three sick days. The new contract also has provisions to increase the number of staff employed full-time, who will thus be eligible for the modest individual and family health care benefits that OneSource provides.
The new contract puts Tufts in the same league as its peers who also outsource their service work: Contract workers at Brandeis, Suffolk, and Northeastern make $10.95, $13.41, and $10.95, respectively. On the other hand, the wages of janitors and custodians on the Hill fall far short of peer institutions who directly employ their workers: MIT, Boston College, and Boston University pay their in-house janitors $15.58, $16.66, and $16.69 an hour, respectively.
The terms of the contract under which OneSource employees will work at Tufts are better than those of the so-called Master Contract, which dictates working terms at a number of area malls and office buildings. To use this fact to justify the new agreement, however, would be to deceive ourselves. This university is not a mall nor an office building -- profit is not our only motive. Tufts is a world-class university that preaches values of community involvement and socially-conscious service. These are not abstract notions. They mean that University employees ought to be paid a wage that is at least enough to live modestly in the very expensive Boston area.
Vice President of Operations John Roberto may attempt to persuade the community that the new contract is either all the market could bear or all the University could afford. This may not be correct. After having just signed away over $2.5 million to Medford and Somerville, to maintain that this University cannot possibly do better for its service workers is misleading.
Chances are, however, that Roberto will simply say nothing about the new agreement, and that the rest of Ballou will follow suit. Don't let them sweep this issue under the rug.<$>
This administration has proven itself to be remarkably unresponsive to the needs and demands of the undergraduate community, as the signing of the agreement over the summer shows. The University is trying to say it has played clean with service wages
