1974: The Time Is Ripe for Unionization

Harvard may pride itself on being different from all other universities in the nation, but a phenomenon that is striking at many other schools has not spared the oldest of them all. For at institutions as diverse as Chicago University and Hampshire College, the staffs of clerical and technical workers are making bids for unionization.

Secretaries and technicians raised the cry at Harvard last winter when a women's organization in the Medical Area--the Boston-based part of the University that includes the Med School, the Dental School, the School of Public Health, and Countway Library--grew to form an organizing committee. The group, still headed by women, affiliated its effort in mid-spring with District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America, a New York-based union.

The organizing committee began circulating petitions in May, but their drive is not yet complete. Leslie Sullivan, a former School of Public Health research assistant who became a full-time organizer in mid-July, said last week that District 65 had collected signatures from over a third of the 800 Medical Area workers, but that organizers would not stop until they had garnered endorsements from two-thirds of the workers.

Although the National Labor Relations Board would conduct a union election after organizers have presented the signatures of 30 per cent of the area's workers, Sullivan explains, "When we have the election we want to be sure that we represent a sizeable majority." The NLRB recognizes the collective bargaining rights of a union upon declaration of support by a simple majority of the workers in an election.

The drive in the Medical Area will probably not prove so simple, however. John B. Butler, director of personnel, says that a union of Medical Area clerical and technical workers would not be an "appropriate bargaining unit," as it would not include the nearly 3000 similar employees in Cambridge who share the same pay-scale with the Boston workers. Such a demonstration by the Harvard administration would probably prompt an NLRB hearing to decide the issue.

For the odds-makers, one important precedent is the NLRB decision in August to deny the bid by 11 mail workers to join the Harvard printer's trade union, Local 16b of the Graphic Arts International Union. In that decision, the NLRB hearing officer endorsed the Harvard administration's argument that the 11 service employees could only join a University-wide union of clerical workers, because all clerical workers perform similar jobs at the same levels of technical expertise.

Medical Area organizers concede that a hearing on their bid is inevitable, but they have decided not to join forces with the growing Cambridge effort because their own drive is so advanced. For instance, the cloak of anonymity that admittedly-fearful organizers maintained as late as June of this year has now long-since been shed, and the same workers now advertise their on-the-job telephone numbers on organizing literature.

The Medical Area District 65 organizers' main gripe is that their wages are below those of most area workers and that their raises have failed to match jumps in the cost-of-living. The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on Boston-area workers are from one year ago, but even these statistics indicate a higher area pay-scale than the July 1974 wage schedule of Harvard workers. For instance, last year's starting secretaries working for "service"-related nonmanufacturing "establishments" in Boston earned from $135 to $152 a week while a starting secretary at Harvard now earns from $117 to $152 a week. There is also differential between the weekly salaries of more-experienced secretaries in Boston and at Harvard.

Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for the wages of clerical workers on a nation-wide basis are complete through March of this year. In general, secretaries in the United States earn slightly more than Harvard secretaries, but if these findings are corrected to consider the relatively high cost of living in the Boston area, the difference is probably greater.

That Harvard cannot offer salaries competitive with other area scientific centers and hospitals which receive larger government subsidy is something administrators here will admit readily. In late-May, officials made a clear concession to the rocketing wages of Boston-area clerical workers--they had gone up an estimated 5.5 per cent over the previous six months--by ordering a flat $300 pay-hike for the next year for every non-union employee of the University. Organizers claimed the raise was an attempt to buy them off, but administrators maintained that the decision was motivated by a fair examination of the local economy.

Medical Area workers are upset, too, about what they consider to be an inequitable system of promotions. Like so many other things at Harvard, promotions and raises are awarded on Harvard's assessment of merit. Organizers find the concept, which often ignores experience and time considerations, elitist and ugly enough, but it is the system in practice that especially disturbs them. Although a worker earns yearly wage-hikes for any work above a "marginal" level, as that worker approaches the upper salary limit of the employment "grade," the possible increments in pay decrease drastically. Organizers maintain that Harvard can hold down salaries by refusing to promote workers who have attained the limit of their grades.

Butler dismisses most union claims because he says the organizers have an axe to grind. Butler also contests the organizers' objections to the promotion system.

"The theoretical framework provides for more open opportunity than at other institutions, and it encourages promotion," he said in early September.

Butler says that he has not confronted the organizers yet, but with an NLRB election in sight before the winter, he is apt to run into them nose-to-nose in a hearing room, perhaps before the end of the year.