Forming a Union

SINCE EARLY MARCH, in a sixth-floor hearing room of the National Labor Relations Board in Boston, lawyers representing Harvard and lawyers for a New York-based labor union have met an average of three times a week before an NLRB hearing officer to present opposing positions. Frequently, University administrators such as Daniel Steiner '54, Harvard's general counsel; John B. Butler, director of personnel; and Douglas Knox, the Medical Area personnel head: are in attendance. Butler and Knox have served as witnesses for Harvard. Steiner simply observes. This issue in question is a petition by a group of Harvard employees to hold a union-forming election. The group is the Medical Area Employees Organizing Committee, an affiliate of a 30,000-member union, District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America. The organizing committee wants some 900 clerical and technical workers in the Medical Area to be allowed to form a union, and have been actively working since 1973 to get the employees interested in having a union. Last spring, after joining District '65, they began collecting signatures on union membership cards, and this past February they filed the signed cards--substantially more than the 30 per cent of all employees required by the NLRB had signed the cards--and petitioned the board for a union-forming election.

Harvard said throughout the organizing drive that it was, in principle, opposed to a union limited to Medical Area personnel. And when the membership cards were filed, Harvard formally told the NLRB that it considered the type of union the organizing committee was trying to form an inappropriate bargaining unit under the National Labor Relations Act.

The NLRB then scheduled hearing in which District '65 has tried to show that Medical Area employees share a separate community of interest, and Harvard has sought to demonstrate that the Medical Area is just one small part of a big centralized University. Harvard has held that the only appropriate bargaining unit for clerical and technical personnel would be University-wide.

So far, the hearings, which have been adjourned until June 3, show that Harvard has been extremely concerned about the possibility of a union in the Medical Area for a long time, and is prepared to go to great lengths to head if off. When District 65's lawyer. Richard Levy, tried to introduce into evidence a 1972 memo from Ropes and Gray. Harvard's law firm, advising it to restructure its personnel office--incorporating the separate Medical Area personnel office into the University's office--his motion failed. Levy tried to show that it was fear of a union that prompted this particular move toward a more centralized personnel structure, but he was told by the NLRB hearing officer that it had no specific relevance to the hearing. NLRB policy seems to be based on the premise that employers can, and often will, take all kinds of steps to prevent unionization, and if Harvard is offering as evidence of centralization a chart of a personnel structure that was significantly changed, just so that it might be used as evidence, so be it. Apparently District 65 will have to fight in court if it wants to make an issue out of the Ropes and Gray memo and the ensuing change. And according to various labor lawyers, their chances of success would be very slim, unless they are able to show that there was an actual union organizing drive in progress in 1972, and not just the embryo of a drive, in the form of various committees.

But the fact that the memo was ever written, the fact that Harvard made the changes, and the fact that the University is paying two lawyers to work on the case on a nearly full-time basis, might make one wonder why Harvard sees the whole thing as so important.

Originally, Harvard seemed to want to represent itself as simply anxious to comply with the law. The University was implying that it was opposing the establishment of a union in the Medical Area, only because it would be an inappropriate bargaining unit, making it appear that its tactic was also its motivation. The absurdity of this position is readily apparent, since all that had to happen for the Medical Area to become an appropriate bargaining unit was for Harvard not to oppose the union.

Certainly it would be administratively easier for Harvard to deal with a single union, rather than a group of unions in separate areas of the University. But actually, the University would prefer no union at all, and insistence on a University-wide union is a good way to insure that no new union bothers Harvard for some time to come.

BUT EVEN IF the NLRB approves its petition for a union-forming election, there is still the question of whether District 65 would win the necessary 50 per cent of the vote. Judging from the number of cards that were turned in--"well over 50 per cent," according to the union's Medical Area organizer, Leslie Sullivan--one would think that there would be no contest. But surveys done by the NLRB indicate that the number of signed cards often has no correlation to the election results. As an NLRB official said last week, "People will sign anything, but voting to join a union is a much more serious commitment." Perhaps the best way to gauge the probable result is to try and determine the degree of rank-and-file participation in the organizing committee's work. Using this standard, the chances for District 65 at the Medical Area seem quite good. Membership meetings are generally well attended--some have attracted nearly 200 employees--and policy motions often come from people not in leadership positions.

But there is another factor that might affect the election. The NLRB will decide during the summer whether the Medical Area is an appropriate unit. If it determines that it is, and if a Harvard appeal fails, assuming Harvard appeals at all, the hearings will enter a second phase. The focus of that phase will be to decide which classifications of employees should be part of the union. Conceivably, a large group of employees who support the union and have signed cards will be eliminated, particularly if the NLRB rules that employees classified as Research Assistant II--a group of paraprofessionals--should not be eligible to join a union of clerical and technical workers. Harvard will argue that the NLRB make such a ruling. Should the board side with Harvard, the outcome of the union-forming vote may well be affected.

An observer at the bearings a few weeks ago wondered if students at Harvard, or more specifically in the Medical Area, supported the union. "I guess they're probably too busy studying to bother," he said, "but, if they ever organized a protest or something, they might really shake Harvard up."