Word: ssi
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...tried to contact company officials at UNICCO and SSI, Harvard's current outsourcers, with mixed success. SSI referred me to their president, Ed Silvey, who repeatedly did not return my calls. Walter W. Crow, the in-house counsel for UNICCO, faxed me a statement that "UNICCO pays its full time employees throughout Cambridge a wage not less than $9.20 an hour" and that they also receive pension and health insurance. "Part time employees receive not less than $8.25," he wrote, and "all employees receive paid vacations, jury duty pay, bereavement pay, personal days, and holidays." Adding these up, Crow contended...
...setting up a stranglehold on the force. The management problems showed Harvard the benefits of outsourcing. After all, Harvard specializes in education, not guarding. It seems natural that Harvard employ companies to provide services like security that are secondary to Harvard's primary goal. And the guards employed by SSI, a private security company, have proven their competence at the medical and business school campuses...
Examining costs alone, Harvard made a smart decision to outsource. But it also raises concerns among students who wonder if the SSI guards are making a living wage. While SSI, as a private company, does not have to release its hourly wage to the public, by most accounts it is below the Harvard guard wage, and it is unclear whether or not its guards receive benefits...
There is also the question of experience. Long-time guards have a familiarity with the campus, which can prove valuable in everyday situations. Guards who can quickly distinguish between students and intruders are an important commodity. It is understandable that SSI guards who are now patrolling the Houses do not know their way around--after all, they just started the job this fall. But the question is, will they stick around long enough to gain familiarity with students and their buildings? While most Harvard guards had been on the force for 10 years or more, only three of the SSI...
These questions of wage equity, experience and familiarity worry us. The efficient management and lower costs may balance out our lack of attachment to the new guards. We hope that SSI will make an effort to keep the same guards in the same houses year after year so that they can gain the same kind of mastery of their surroundings as the Harvard guards had. And even if the SSI guards don't stay for long, we hope that they become familiar with our faces, and maybe learn a couple of our names...