Ivy League ignobility
Harvard University and AlliedBarton , one of America's biggest security firms, wouldn't normally be considered soul mates.
But they agree on one issue: that at $12.67 an hour, the college's security guards -- who guard the university but are employed by Allied -- are not underpaid.
Najeb Hussein is one of those guards, and he strongly disagrees. A Pakistani immigrant with five children, he thinks the company would be better served by better-paid employees.
He is one of a group of guards hoping to align with Service Employees International Union Local 615. Their effort has been endorsed by, among others, Mayor Thomas M. Menino. But so far, they've gotten nowhere.
"If you treat a person properly, he might do better for you," Hussein said yesterday. "If they want the maximum work from a person, they should treat a person properly."
The university's guards are upset that they make nearly $3 an hour less than janitors at the school, who organized a few years ago. But mostly they say it just isn't enough money to support a family in Greater Boston. Some live in public housing to make ends meet; others are on food stamps.
Former Michigan congressman David Bonior was scheduled to speak at a rally in support of the guards last night in Cambridge. In his new role as chairman of American Rights At Work, a pro labor group, he has sparred with security firms in several cities.
"The security workers are mostly men of color who are paid low wages and live in a high-cost environment and can barely get by," Bonior said yesterday. "These workers are being disrespected."
Union organizers insist the company does not want the workers to unionize. SEIU recently won a similar battle at the University of Miami, where janitors organized after a lengthy struggle.
The union identifies a second villain in the battle: Harvard, America's richest university. If the university really wanted its contractor to make labor peace, it would happen in a hurry, they contend.
That may be, but Harvard officials insist this is not their fight. They reject the pay comparison to janitors, arguing that it is a different job. Harvard has some security officers who are unionized, and they say the AlliedBarton guards are paid identically. They say that is what university policy dictates for outside contractors.
"Harvard has not and will not interfere in this matter," spokesman Joe Wrinn said yesterday. "It really is a matter between the company and its employees."
Somewhat disingenuously, AlliedBarton claims to have no problem with its employees joining a union. All they want, they say, is a supervised election.
That, however, is a major bone of contention. The kind of election the company favors could discourage employees from unionization. In the more common kind of election, in which employees simply turn in signed cards declaring their support, such coercion is not allowed.
AlliedBarton spokesman Larry Rubin told me yesterday that the company doesn't believe employees would get anything out of organizing, that they get the same wages and benefits as union members without having to pay dues.
I think the guards have a better sense of whether they need to organize than their bosses do. More important , I think it is next to impossible to support a family in Boston or Cambridge on $12.67 an hour.
Harvard's position -- that their nonunion guards are paid no differently than their unionized guards -- is a dubious, not to mention self-serving, standard.
Five years ago, there was a sit-in at Harvard that resulted in the policy Wrinn cites. It was meant to result in better pay and conditions for the school's lower-wage workers. In this case, the policy is being followed to the letter, but the larger goal is getting lost.
A full-time Harvard employee should be able to support his or her family. The employee should never have to say, as Najeb Hussein told me yesterday, "I see they treat people like they're nothing."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
