A Medical-Area Union

HARVARD AGAIN last week reaffirmed its opposition to the idea of a labor union for the 800-odd clerical and technical employees in the medical area, saying again that the only union the medical area employees could join would be a University wide one. A medical area organizing committee that has the support of most medical area clerical workers will file for a union forming election this months, and Harvard's opposition could severely hamper or even kill the group's unionizing effort.

The University should change its position and allow medical area clerical employees to form their own union. The workers, most of them secretaries are not particularly well-paid and have at the moment no voice in the personnel policies that govern their jobs here. A union would give them some degree of over their working lives.

It is not easy to organize a clerical workers' union because the workers hold a wide variety of job, are scattered over a large area and don't stay in the same job for long. The medical area organizing committee has done an impressive job of gaining the support of most medical area clerical workers for a kind of union that is new in America--secretaries have traditionally not been organized into their own unions but it would have a difficult time organizing all of Harvard's 400 clerical workers, a group spread out over three cities.

A University wide workers union would certainly have tactical advantages--if it went on strike it could virtually shutdown Harvard--but the organizing drive among Cambridge clerical workers have just started. The Cambridge group will probably take a long time to get on its feet, but after it does it can work closely enough with the medical area group to be able to function practically as a single unit, well-attuned to the specific needs of members in different areas.

The work of clerical employees throughout Harvard is similar but their locations are completely different. The medical area is four miles from the rest of the University, and it is ridiculous for Harvard to demand a single administrative structure for workers there and in Cambridge, when it runs the two areas as completely separate entities. The University is asking of a huge group of clerical workers a degree of bureaucratic efficiency that it does not come close to maintaining itself. Its insistence on a University-wide union almost seems like an attempt to head off the unionizing drive altogether.