Harvard reaches five-year contract deal with janitors

By Katherine Landergan and Martine Powers, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff

As the clock ticked down to a midnight deadline, Harvard and unionized custodial workers struck a new five-year contract late last night that includes wage increases, health care, and four weeks of paid vacation time.

If an agreement had not been reached by midnight -- when the union’s contract expired -- Harvard’s janitorial staff would likely have gone on strike, union officials said.

Sarah Betancourt, a spokeswoman for the union, said in a statement that the new contract was “a victory for Harvard janitors and the 99 percent,” referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“Harvard University janitors have fought for one Harvard, with fairness and dignity for all,” she said in the statement. “With Harvard’s reputation as a preeminent institution for higher education, this agreement will be seen as an example for other universities to treat workers with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

No specific details on the new contract were immediately available late last night. The union membership of 653 will vote on the tentative pact on Friday, Betancourt said.

Yesterday afternoon, about 35 union supporters protested outside a Harvard theater. They wore signs reading, “The Harvard Corporation stands with the 1%, while the 99% struggle for full-time work,” and marched outside Harvard’s Loeb Drama Center on Brattle Street, where university president Drew Faust was moderating a discussion panel on the opera “Nixon in China.”

“A strike’s our last resort. It’s not really what we would like to do, but if we have to, that’s what we’ll need to do,” said Pedro Malave, 30, an organizer with the union, earlier in the day.

The protesters were composed of union supporters, custodial staff, and members of Occupy Harvard. They shouted into megaphones in Spanish, “Without justice, without a contract, there will not be peace.”

The group also elicited some chuckles when they adapted a line from a popular song by the rapper Ludacris, chanting, “Move, Harvard, get out the way.”

After half an hour, the group headed off to Dewey Square in downtown Boston, where they planned to protest at the Harvard Corporation offices on the 16th floor of the Federal Reserve building.

Occupy Harvard released a statement on Monday announcing its solidarity with Harvard’s unionized janitorial workers and demanding a “settlement of a fair union contract for Harvard’s custodial workers, according to the demands they have put forth.”

“We stand in solidarity with fights for economic justice across the globe, but one such fight is happening right here on campus,” Harvard employee and Occupier Keith Rosenthal said in the release. “It’s ridiculous that a university with $32 billion apparently can’t afford a fair contract for its custodians.”

Harvard Executive Vice President Katie Lapp said in a statement that the new contract will ensure that Harvard custodians will continue to earn well above the standard rate the union has negotiated for the Boston area.

“I am delighted that we have been able to reach agreement on a new contract that benefits both the University and the people who help to make it one of the world’s premier institutions for research and education,” Lapp said.