SLAM is requesting that Harvard not reinvest in HEI Hotels and Resorts.

Workers at HEI Hotels have been organizing around issues of low wages, poor benefits, workplace injuries, missing compensation and lacking breaks. HEI has also been accused of anti-union activities. We have prepared a report detailing the unethical nature of HEI’s business plan and explaining a history of intimidation of union activists, low wages, and poor benefits in HEI-managed hotels.

As students at Harvard, we are expected to behave in a socially responsible manner. We may only hope that this university uses its own immense economic and political power to advance causes beneficial for the university’s reputation of social responsibility and justice in society.

Many students also support non-reinvestment in HEI. The February 8, 2011 Crimson Staff editorial declared, “This should go without saying, but Harvard should advocate for workers' rights in the companies it invests in. Unions play a valuable role in maintaining fair working standards for employees, and the allegations that HEI is hindering their presence within its hotels should call Harvard’s relations with the company into question.” As of now, 17 student groups have cosigned our letter to the administration.

Over the years the Harvard administration has demonstrated respect for the existence of a social compact with Harvard’s workers.

Over the years, Harvard has provided decent wages and a good benefit package. This has come as a result of struggle involving the commitment and solidarity of workers together with students and faculty and the entire Harvard community. But the result has become decades of evidence of the mutual understanding of a social compact. We appreciate this reality as a great good.

Moreover, Harvard and HUHDS proudly promote initiatives in sustainable foods, sustainable living and energy use. They proudly point to Harvard’s leadership in the sustainability movement, as a community of a higher calling. This is a great good.

In the past, there also has been a commitment to make HUHDS jobs sustainable jobs, from which it would be possible to raise a family and have a home.

But, in recent years, there is evidence that the social compact has been eroding.