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T HE T UFTS DAILY Union holds janitors’ protest, wins short-term extension by Yiyun Tom Guan News Editor
32BJ Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the union that represents custodians at Tufts University, held a rally on Friday afternoon in front of West Hall in protest of Tufts’ failure to extend its contract and meet its demands. The protest was held in collaboration with the Tufts Labor Coalition and was attended by workers, union representatives, students and community members. Before the rally, the contract between 32BJ SEIU and C&W Services, a facilities contractor hired by Tufts, was set to expire on Oct. 31. A few hours after the rally, Roxana Rivera, executive vice president of 32BJ SEIU, announced that the contract had been extended to Dec. 3. Christina Villafranca, a field representative for 32BJ SEIU; Otoniel Figueroa, field director of 32BJ SEIU district 615 and Adelaida Colón, a janitor and union shop steward who has been working at Tufts for 25 years, addressed the rally; the latter did so in Spanish. Afterwards, attendees started signing a petition before the crowd moved from West to Ballou Hall and eventually entered Ballou. “We do not want [Tufts] to call these members heroes,” Figueroa said. “We want them to treat them like heroes.” “Tufts, escuchan, estamos en la lucha [Tufts, listen, we are in the fight],” the crowd chanted while marching. In a subsequent interview with the Daily, Colón explained that the protest took place as the negotiation between C&W and 32BJ SEIU stalled due to the former declining to meet the salary and full-time position increase that the union demanded. She noted that last October, 32BJ SEIU and C&W reached a one-year deal that increased salary by 65 cents per hour with no new full-time positions, as the firm argued that the pandemic posed financial restraints for Tufts. However , during subsequent negotiation, when Colón and the union asked for an annual $1 wage increase and three more full-time positions for the next two years, C&W refused. “When I asked [the C&W lawyer] why [he didn’t] want to give me more money, he said because Tufts [has] a lot of things [to pay
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Thursday, November 4, 2021
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
for] … now it’s made no money. I know that’s not true,” Colón said. “[Many janitors] don’t have full-time jobs. [They] don’t have any benefits. All the benefits they have are a couple of sick days, but [they] don’t have medical insurance.” Colón went on to explain that she fought for more full-time positions every year because part-time positions do not include sufficient benefits. For her, the inflation resulting from the pandemic exacerbated the economic difficulty experienced by workers, but didn’t affect as much the very people who rejected their demands. “Everything is expensive — how are we surviving?” Colón said. “[Despite] the pandemic, [C&W didn’t] pay extra money for anybody. People are so sick, [but it] doesn’t want to pay for insurance … [while the contractors] are taking vacations, taking sick days.” Colón also explained that Tufts’ sanitation policy in light of the pandemic brought extra burden onto its janitorial workers, who did not received matching compensation in return. Tufts also failed to hire new personnel for assistance. “Extra disinfection, extra chemicals … now you need to disinfect everywhere,” Colón said. “Before I [could] clean the shower once or twice a week, now it’s every day. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to work like that … with the same [number of ] people.” After entering Ballou, the rally was uncertain if the administrators heard its demand, according to Alexis Hedvat, an organizer with the TLC. “We were knocking on the door and saw two people in one of the offices who were not opening the door for us and ignoring [our] knocks,” Hedvat, a junior, said in an electronic message to the Daily. “Finally somebody opened the door. We asked if we could give them the petition to give to [University President Tony Monaco] and they said they would give it to him. We asked if we could watch them put it on his desk, but they refused to let us do that, saying, ‘I will make sure it gets to him.’” In 1994, Tufts began outsourcing its custodial service. Before, custodians were still considered university employees who see LABOR, page 2
Mass. legislature works to appropriate federal ARPA funds by Fernando Cervantes Jr. Staff Writer
President Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package titled the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 in March. Massachusetts received about $5.3 billion in funding from the bill for post-pandemic recovery efforts. On Oct. 29, the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted unanimously to appropriate around $3.6 billion of the ARPA funding. Christine Barber, a state representative for the 34th Middlesex District, which covers much of Tufts University’s Medford/ Somerville campus and the surrounding areas, explained that the state legislature had a different timeline in mind for the spending bill than Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who wanted to spend the money as soon as possible. “Initially the governor wanted to spend it quickly, but the legislature basically pulled the money back and created a fund that had that money in it [for later use],” Barber said. State Representative for the 27th Middlesex District Erika Uyterhoeven, who represents the rest of Tufts’ Medford/ Somerville campus and a swath of Somerville including Davis Square, spoke about a lack of public transparency throughout the bill-drafting process. “The public has access to the bill about 24 hours before we vote on it,” Uyterhoeven said. “Just because the bill is released [to the public] doesn’t mean that
MICHELLE LI / THE TUFTS DAILY
A row of houses on Berwick Road in Medford. there are articles written about it, right? So unfortunately that’s one of the many issues about the lack of transparency in our legislature.” Patricia Jehlen, state senator for the 2nd Middlesex District, which represents all of the Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus, explained that, before the vote, state legislators had made recommendations on how to spend the money. Legislators from the Somerville and Medford area advocated for the funding to go towards infrastructure, housing and climate change mitigation efforts. Jehlen sought $10 million to conduct an environmental impact review of the Green Line Extension. “The next stage in the extension of the Green Line … is the environmental impact review, and $10 million would fund that,” Jehlen said. Barber spoke in favor of the Green Line Extension Project, and hoped to use ARPA funding to fund that project. “Getting the Green Line Extension to go one more stop to Mystic Valley Parkway, Route 16,
that’s been a proposal for a long time,” Barber said. “I would like to fund the design of that next [MBTA] stop.” There had also been calls to direct the funding toward a pilot program that would lower the cost of the MBTA. “Lowering [fares] or making the MBTA free is a really big issue particularly for low-income and immigrant communities because it is a really regressive form of taxation through our public transit,” Uyterhoeven said. Jehlen explained how this pilot program would work in more detail. “All the buses in the MBTA system would be free during the pilot and you would find out what will happen to ridership and to costs,” Jehlen said. “That’s a relatively small ask, $70 million a year, would pay if you had farefree buses throughout the state.” In addition to infrastructure, there had been calls among Massachusetts legislators to allocate the money toward housing programs. Barber discussed a program she supports that seeks see ARPA, page 2
SCIENCE
Bite-Size Science: 23andMe for horses? Genetics provide clues on equine ancestry by Ian Lau
Contributing Writer
An analysis of ancient animal DNA samples has helped identify the genetic homeland of modern horses from around 4,200 years ago. A team of archaeologists spent the last five years collecting thousands of horse samples — from bones to teeth — in locations where the animals could have originated. Researchers utilized radiocarbon dating to figure out the age of different samples and
tracked several horse populations before, during and after domestication. By comparing these different populations, the team concluded in a recent report published in Nature that modern domestic horses originated from the steppes — which are grasslands located in present-day Russia — before spreading across Eurasia and replacing all preexisting horse lineages. Further research also shows that horse populations began to proliferate soon after modern horses originated, when horse
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transportation grew in popularity. This new discovery also challenges preexisting notions of important human migrations in history. The Yamnaya, a culture credited with spreading Indo-European languages into Europe, were assumed to have used horses to migrate across Europe. However, genetic analysis of horses indicates that there were few domestic horse ancestors outside of the Eurasian Steppes, changing previous understanding about their role in mass human migrations. NEWS
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