An Uncivil Action
by Nik Steinberg, Editor-in-Chief on April 30, 2008 in HKS News, News
On July 7, 2007, Harvard campus security guard Rajiv Ghimiray was working the night shift when he started to feel dizziness and a tingling feeling throughout his body. Ghimiray, who suffers from high blood pressure, sat down to rest on a sofa in a dorm lounge, where his supervisor found him minutes later. He was given an official warning for taking an unauthorized break.
Two days later, Ghimiray was fired. He’s been fighting to get his job back ever since.
After a prolonged battle between his union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and his employer, AlliedBarton, an independent arbitrator ruled that Ghimiray “was terminated without just cause,” and should be reinstated with back pay and benefits.
But more than a month after the decision, AlliedBarton has still not given Ghimiray his job back and is trying to shift the blame to Harvard. Campus security guards, union organizers and student activists say the firm’s behavior shows a lack of respect for their binding labor agreement and a pattern of dishonesty. If Ghimiray is not reinstated soon, his union steward said, all options are on the table.
The independent arbitrator’s ruling, which was issued on March 13, 2008, gave AlliedBarton 14 days to give Ghimiray his old job back.
According to a contract signed by the SEIU and AlliedBarton last summer, all arbitrators’ decision are “final and binding.”
But rather than reinstate Ghimiray, AlliedBarton tried to reassign him to a different site in downtown Boston. According to Matt Gulish - an organizer at the SEIU Local 615, which represents the campus security guards - this would have left him without union protection.
“The guards don’t have a union contract downtown,” Gulish said. “Without it, AlliedBarton is not required to follow a just cause standard. They could have fired him outright.”
When the union asked AlliedBarton why they had not given Ghimiray back his old job, the firm said that Harvard had asked that he not be rehired. The union asked AlliedBarton for some proof of Harvard’s request or the name of the individual who had made it, but the security firm refused.
In response, on April 15, security guards and union representatives went to Harvard’s Office of Labor Relations and confronted its director, Bill Murphy, with AlliedBarton’s claim.
Murphy told the group that no one in his office had made such a request and promised to investigate whether it had come from anyone else at the University, according to several people who attended the meeting. Several days later, Murphy told the union that AlliedBarton’s claim was untrue.
A Harvard spokesman echoed Murphy’s message in an email to the Citizen.
“We would not ask a contractor to violate an arbitrator’s binding decision,” wrote Joe Wrinn. “Essentially, this is a matter between SEIU and AlliedBarton.”
When contacted for a response, AlliedBarton’s Paul Caruso said he was unfamiliar with Ghimiray’s case, and that it was inappropriate to discuss a grievance that was ongoing.
According to Arman Rezaee (MPP1), who was part of a student delegation to Harvard’s labor office last week, the action “showed that we were willing to call Allied’s bluff,” and that the firm had been caught trying to hide behind its client.
Before he was fired, the 26-year old Ghimiray was working as many as 40 hours a week for AlliedBarton while studying aviation technology at a Boston technical school.
Described by coworkers as a “very hard working and humble guy,” Ghimiray came to the U.S. from Nepal when he was 15-years-old.
Most nights, he would go directly from school, where he took classes on weekdays from 4:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., to the Harvard campus, where he would patrol the campus from midnight to 8:00 a.m.
Ghimiray said that his superiors at AlliedBarton knew that he had a medical condition. Earlier in the year, he had been hospitalized several times for his high blood pressure, once even when he was on the job. But on the night he was warned for taking a break, he said, his supervisors never asked why he was resting.
After he was fired, Ghimiray applied for unemployment, but AlliedBarton resisted, he said. “They kept on lying to the unemployment office,” he told the Citizen. “I got one call and they told me AlliedBarton said I had just quit my job, that I wasn’t fired.”
As a result, Ghimiray wasn’t able to start collecting unemployment until three months after he’d been fire. In the months in between, he said, he had to borrow money from his brother-in-law to cover his rent and food.
“If my brother-in-law hadn’t helped me,” he said, “I’d be homeless.”
Emeka Onyeagoro, a campus security guard and local union steward who has worked for AlliedBarton for three years, said that he was deeply upset when he heard what had happened to Ghimiray.
“That they want to choose what parts [of the contract] they abide by is irresponsible,” Onyeagoro said. “If they can do this to an agreement they signed, we might as well throw the whole thing in the trash.”
However, SEIU’s Gulish is hopeful. “We’re not at the point where we’re ready to declare victory, but we think Harvard is on the right track,” he said. The union plans to keep pushing for Ghimiray’s reinstatement, he said.
But until AlliedBarton honors the agreement, Onyeagoro says, “all options are on the table. If they don’t do the right thing, any action we take will be justified, and they will suffer the consequences.”
The current Harvard contract for AlliedBarton, which employs approximately 250 security guards on the campus, is due to expire on June 30, 2008.
As for Ghimiray, he finished his degree this month, and plans to take an examination with the Federal Aviation Authority soon.
“Then,” he said, “I’ll finally be able to get a job.”
Written by Nik Steinberg, Editor-in-Chief · Filed Under HKS News, News
Nik Steinberg is the editor-in-chief of the Citizen.
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