Word: skillman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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investigation. But his name was quickly cleared with support from the students and faculty he had come to know during his time on the job. According to Skillman, he found advocates in some of Harvard’s biggest names, such as former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who would ask for updates on the “Yard situation” every time the two of them ran into each other...
Upon his exoneration, Skillman came back and put in 15 more years, working as a guard at the Kennedy School of Government and the Widener entrance gate. He remained at Harvard until last May, when the University announced that all guard positions would henceforth be outsourced to Allied-Barton Security—a company that had been steadily cutting into the Harvard guard union’s workforce since the 1970s. The union, which had shrunk from over 120 members to a mere seven by the time the Allied deal was struck last summer, was thus finished...
...were basically forced out of there,” Peter Skillman says of last summer’s Allied deal. “We got up to the police station, and they turned around and said they were giving us a buyout. Our union and [Harvard University Police Department Chief Riley] said we should take it, because this was it. ‘If you don’t take it,’ they said, ‘you’re out of here anyhow.’ But I wanted to finish up my remaining years...
...Skillman says job protection is what kept him and his colleagues in the security force away from the non-unionized Allied. “If we went with them, our protection would be down the tubes. We would no longer be in the union,” he explains. “And it’s pretty simple—when you’re in the union, you’re protected. When you’re not in the union, they can get rid of you—they don’t need a reason...
...Skillman complains, even his own union couldn’t protect his job from the pull of outsourcing...