HUCTW Members Rally Outside Smith Center Against Proposed FAS Layoffs

More than 100 Harvard administrative workers rallied outside the Smith Campus Center on Wednesday afternoon to protest a Faculty of Arts and Sciences plan that could lay off up to a quarter of FAS staff this summer.

The rally — hosted by the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers — came in response to a proposal from the FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning to consolidate department-level administrators into shared “clusters” that would serve multiple academic units at once.

The structure, developed with support from McKinsey & Company, would replace unit-level administrators with staff supporting several departments, centers, or institutes at a time.

HUCTW organizer Carrie Barbash said the rally was meant to supplement other efforts the union has made to push back against the plan, including a recent letter to top FAS administrators.

“We also wanted to get out together and let the community know more widely and in a different way about what’s been going on because things are escalating quickly,” Barbash said.

Tracey Barbaro, a lab coordinator in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, argued that administrators routinely undervalue union members’ work.

“Too often, top Harvard administrators think this kind of labor and their research and teaching somehow happens independently from it, as if the work we do is just peripheral,” Barbaro said. “But the truth is that if that were not provided to you — that essential infrastructure across the University — academic life would grind to a halt.”

Barbash said members are “most worried” about their own livelihoods but claimed the layoffs would also reach beyond the union.

“It’s an awful thing to do,” she said. “But — on top of that — it’s a bad decision for the University. It’s going to hurt Harvard; it’s going to hurt faculty and students.”

“There’s so many services that our staff provide to students and cutting off a big group of staff is just going to be so harmful to the University,” she added.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that “the University is immensely grateful of the work done by the members of HUCTW and values the contributions of our entire workforce in making the Harvard community a special place to work, teach and learn.”

Kathy Richman, director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, said she attended the rally in solidarity with union members and called the proposed cuts “excessive.”

“I’m supporting my coworkers who do a very, very good job and work very hard,” Richman said. “I understand that some cuts need to be made to make the administration in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences more efficient, but I hope that the administration would be very judicious in what they cut and how much they cut.”

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote that several details of the restructuring are still being worked out.

“Many details remain under development, including how the structure may affect specific roles or reporting relationships, and no final decisions have been made,” he wrote.

The rally comes weeks after HUCTW ratified a one-year contract with the University that delivered a flat $2,300 wage increase, citing financial uncertainty on campus as the reason for the short-term deal. The contract was approved with 80 percent support, but the share of dissenting votes nearly doubled from the union’s last ratification vote.

“I know there were some people in the union that didn’t want us to ratify the contract, but we felt strongly that the one year contract is the way to move forward on the short term,” said Hannah Merchant, another Organismic and Evolutionary Biology employee.

“We obviously hope for better things for all of us, bigger raises, but we just have to do what we can one step at a time,” she added.

—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at carolinegh.53. Follow her on X @cghennigan.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at csimon.13. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.