COMMENTS: The UAW Tackles Harvard
Hochberg, Mona R.
When clerical workers reached a labor agreement with Yale University last winter, the reverberations were felt throughout the country. After a 10-week strike, the 2,500 workers, most of...
...Workers received lectures and written materials on why District 65 was not "the proper union...
...The last days before the April 1981 election saw tension rise and cost the union last-minute votes...
...Throughout the years of organizing, Harvard had appealed to the NLRB in attempts to thwart the campaigning...
...4) Grievance Procedures...
...Currently, Harvard pays approximately 50 percent for the workers' and their dependents' health insurance...
...Many of the Medical Area workers were unwilling to give up, and Cambridge campus workers were coming forward and announcing their willingness to organize...
...Harvard management was unresponsive...
...The strike at Yale proved that female clerical workers can show the same solidarity as workers in the bluecollar trades that have traditionally been seen as labor's domain...
...Workers want a 100 percent medicaldental plan for themselves and their families...
...As in the Yale union, the issue of comparable worth is intrinsically linked to the issue of wage levels...
...After two elections—held in 1977 and 1981—in which the union was narrowly defeated, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled the proposed bargaining unit invalid, declaring that all of Harvard's clerical and technical workers must vote in any representation election...
...The final vote was 47-53 percent, and 31 swing votes out of 850 had gone the wrong way...
...2) Benefits...
...Harvard claimed that District 65 had not been able to increase benefits at other workplaces and implied that the union was on shaky financial ground and desperate for dues-paying members...
...They didn't represent any other university workers at that time...
...Early Organizing Efforts IN THE EARLY '70s, women employed in the Harvard Medical Area met regularly to talk about their jobs...
...The NLRB had decided that the disputed workers could vote in the 1977 election and that the question of whether they could remain in the unit would be decided after* District 65 now represents the clerical workers at Columbia University...
...Student groups and some faculty members have expressed a willingness to help...
...A network of alumni has become active...
...Maureen Lennon, now an active union supporter at the Graduate School of Education, voted against the union when she worked at the Medical School in the late '70s: I just didn't think District 65 had the experience, and money, to sit down with Harvard and negotiate a good contract...
...Secretaries," says Norma Diala, "are looked upon like Xerox machines...
...According to Kris Rondeau, a former Medical Area technician who now heads the UAW organizing campaign, upper management fed misinformation to professors and administrators about how a union would affect budgets and labor relations...
...A group called Friends of Harvard UAW has been formed to coordinate people outside the university...
...Harvard UAW will negotiate for a contract that shortens the time until a grievance hearing takes place, with binding third-party arbitration...
...If it 'hurts' Harvard to pay us higher wages, they'll respect our work and us as workers more...
...Realizing that they were underpaid, they decided to approach the university for a discussion of wage levels...
...they were going beyond that, into a renewed consciousness of what it means to be a worker in this country today...
...The Medical Area is located across the river from the Cambridge campus and was seen as a separate and more cohesive branch...
...But this doesn't help the workers, whose UAW slogan is "We Can't Eat Prestige...
...It only takes five minutes," says Maureen Lennon, secretary at the Graduate School of Education, "for a professor to come up in the elevator, drop 100 pages of typing on my desk, and go back down again...
...ward...
...Harvard looks at the employee's last five years of salary, figures what he or she needs to live as a retiree, deducts what Social Security provides, and pays the rest...
...Unless one read the very fine print, it wouldn't be evident that the booklet was published by Harvard...
...Because sexual harassment is a much-discussed issue on the campus, Harvard conducted a survey on the subject last year...
...The prounion workers were not deterred by the election results and organized for a second election...
...There were Nobel Prize winners telling their technicians and secretaries that joining the union meant the Department wouldn't be able to afford equipment and conduct experiments...
...As for the current pension plan, Rondeau says, "It should be illegal and is immoral...
...After a 10-week strike, the 2,500 workers, most of them women, had won substantial wage and benefit improvements...
...5) Respect...
...with the jobs held primarily by women paying considerably less money...
...At a time when the labor movement is on the defensive, this alone was enough to make front-page news...
...393 Harvard's tactics were successful...
...Harvard also tried repeatedly to have the bargaining unit declared invalid because it was confined to the Medical Area...
...The reviews don't really serve to give adequate raises," said one secretary, "because even an excellent review will get you only a small raise...
...Current organizing is centered around the following issues: (1) Wages...
...Women workers are looking to the union to establish procedures for sexual-harassment grievances...
...It serves, rather, as a means of control...
...If the labor movement is to survive, it must reach out to women and to office and university workers...
...Now 82 percent of Harvard's bargainingunit members are women...
...The description may say that a secretary is to work for two fulltime and three quarter-time professors...
...If the panel should rule in a woman's favor, no guarantee exists that any action will be taken...
...Harvard does have guidelines for such complaints...
...Harvard's upper-echelon people involved themselves personally in this campaign...
...In an election held in 1977, the union was defeated 44-56 percent...
...Harvard then published a 35-page "fact" booklet on District 65...
...But quartertime professors can generate full-time work...
...Others felt that the last election had been lost by such a small margin, it made sense to try again...
...To facilitate organizing such a large group, the union affiliation was switched from District 65 to an independent UAW local...
...Flyers were sent to clerical and technical staff throughout the Medical Area...
...Female faculty and students were interviewed, but not secretaries and other staff...
...Word of the Yale victory came during an all-day Harvard–UAW meeting that was upbeat to begin with, but jubilant when the call came from New Haven...
...Then there was the "paternalistic" antiunion rhetoric...
...First the university challenged the suitability of having certain occupations in the union-bargaining unit...
...Current Concerns THERE ARE NOW 4,000 workers in 440 buildings in over 250 different job descriptions to be organized...
...It was begun in 1974 by the employees of the Harvard Medical Area (the Medical School, the School of Public Health, and the School of Dentistry...
...The campaign pointed out that before the first election Harvard had increased the employer-paid percentage of health insurance and instituted a tuition assistance plan...
...Harvard workers definitely needed a union, but I felt it was better to remain without a union than vote in a weak one that couldn't deal with the slickness of Harvard.* Kris Rondeau feels that the office tension that often accompanies union organizing can be responsible for workers casting antiunion votes: "A person may like the idea of a union," she says, "but when the work atmosphere becomes charged with tension, the worker may vote the union out just so the office calms down...
...A New Optimism for the Future HARVARD UAW has been cultivating additional sources of support for the workers in their universitywide campaign...
...You can't write respect into a contract clause, but many workers believe that proving their strength by organizing will win them the respect they found difficult to gain as individual workers...
...Garrett Rosenblatt, a Harvard alumnus who works for Radcliffe, was particularly impressed by the spirit of the Yale workers...
...Before both the '77 and '81 elections, the NLRB sided with District 65...
...Raises are minimal and supposedly based on annual reviews...
...Harvard has an endowment of $2.3 billion...
...But the real significance of Yale lay in what it may portend for labor's future...
...When the second, 1981 campaign started, the unchallenged members voted to remove the contested workers from the bargaining unit, eliminating an opportunity for another Harvard appeal to the NLRB, and hoping that these workers would organize their own union local...
...The day after the negative '84 NLRB decision, the union sent letters to all eligible employees stating that union organizing would expand onto the Cambridge campus...
...People weren't just talking about the immediate benefits that the union would bring...
...The campaign has now spread out from the Medical Area to involve all 4,000 of Harvard's clerical and technical employees...
...Workers complain of being hired on deceptive job descriptions...
...Something is happening, and management can't stop it...
...For months, reports Kris Rondeau, "workers at Harvard have been seeing the advantages of collective action...
...Rondeau claims it was purposely made to resemble an official publication of the NLRB...
...but workers find them too weak...
...But in April 1984 the NLRB overturned its former decisions —following the antilabor call of the Reagan administration...
...At that point, including the rest of the university in the campaign was not seriously considered...
...Rondeau recounts management's line: "We're so sorry, we didn't know you were upset with your job...
...Harvard management did not stand by passively...
...If Harvard increased those benefits in response to a union drive, just think what the union could negotiate once it was recognized...
...Workers who feel that they have been unfairly fired now have a right to appeal to a grievance committee—but all the arbitrators are paid by Harvard...
...Workers are not simply concerned with their wages: they are interested in the basic societal 394 unfairness that tracks men and women with similar educational levels into different job paths...
...But the decision to continue the campaign was debated for weeks after that among the union organizers and active workers...
...At Harvard University, a campaign to win union representation has been under way for more than 10 years...
...Harvard UAW members identified strongly with their Yale counterparts, during their struggle, and participated in solidarity demonstrations with them, traveling to Yale to give support to the strikers and picketing Yale President Giamatti when he dined with Harvard President Bok in Boston during the Harvard–Yale football weekend...
...The prounion voting of 44 percent of the workers, despite Harvard's continuous antiunion activity, was not a disappointing figure...
...Many people were feeling drained and uncertain of what awaited them on the Cambridge campus...
...Daniel Steiner, the university's general counsel, was at the Medical Area daily, meeting with workers in groups and on a one-to-one basis, explaining the "inappropriateness" of having District 65 at Harvard...
...3) Job Descriptions...
...After considering which union would best suit their purposes, the workers decided to go with District 65 of the United Auto Workers...
...The contract will also provide a transfer for the employee without loss of pay or seniority, while the case is under consideration...
...Faculty were told that wage increases would come out of department budgets," she says...
...There is no dental plan...
...You know your review is coming up so you're on better behavior...
...When the union is voted down and the organizing stops, we'll improve wages and benefits...
...Workers realize that the union will not be able to remove all unpleasant tasks from their jobs, but as Norma Diala, a staff assistant at the Graduate School of Education, says, "At least we'll get paid for it...
...Harvard workers feel a need for a more structured and equitable grievance system...
Vol. 32 • September 1985 • No. 4
