Two Groups Seek Unionization Vote

Two separate groups of Harvard office workers, one in Cambridge and the other at Harvard Medical School in Boston, are engaged in organizing efforts that could lead to the formation of a labor union local for Harvard University's nearly 3000 office and clerical workers.

If such a union local formed, it would be Harvard's largest by far. The largest union local at Harvard now is the Harvard University Employees Representative Association, with 600 members.

A group called the Medical Area Employees' Organizing Committee has been working toward unionization for more than a year, and last spring affiliated itself with District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America, a New York-based clerical workers' union.

Union Drive

One member of the Medical Area group, Leslie A. Sullivan, quit her job at the Med School during the summer to become a full-time employee of District 65 working in the unionization drive.

In Cambridge, a less formal group of secretaries began to talk about unionization during the spring and has met twice a week all summer.

The group. Harvard Employees' Organizing Committee, has contacted several unions, including District 65, about a possible union affiliation.

Gertraude Schroder, a secretary in the Physics Department and spokesman for the group, said during the summer that the time is "very ripe" for an office and clerical union at Harvard, but that the Harvard Employees Organizing Committee will probably wait one or two years before trying to hold a union-forming vote here.

John B. Butler, Harvard's director of Personnel, has said the University would contest the Medical Area group's attempts to form a union before the National Labor Relations Board on the grounds that the only appropriate union of office and clerical workers at Harvard would be a University-wide one.

Butler has said he would probably not contest a drive to form a University-wide clerical union, which is the Harvard Employees' Organizing Committee's goal.

The two organizing groups have been in fairly regular contact with each other all spring and summer.

In order for a specific group of employees to form a union, 30 per cent of them have to submit cards to the NLRB stating that they want to unionize. The NLRB will then sponsor a union-forming vote if it rules that the group constitutes a unit of workers distinct enough to form a labor union. From Whence Came '78* Region  Number  Percentage  Class of '77 Percentage New England  311  27.7%  (29%) Mid Atlantic  338  30.1%  (27.5%) South  127  11.3%  (10.4%) Mid West  180  16%  (17.6%) Mt. States  25  2.2%  (3%) Pacific States  100  8.9%  (8.8%) Territories  3  .4%  -- Overseas  38  3.4%  -- *Radcliffe had not compiled its geographical breakdown by press time.