Of Bargaining And Changes

For Harvard and its labor unions, the year was one of frenetic activity that will lead to structural changes for the University next year because of the defects that activity brought to light.

It was a year of unusually heavy negotiations. Harvard's three numerically largest labor unions all had contracts expiring this year, and the trend was to sign new contracts of a year in length, rather than the longer periods that make the University's administrative load easier.

At the same time, Harvard's labor relations activity was starting to move out of the smoky bargaining room and into the National Labor Relations Board headquarters in Boston, where the University fought a couple of legalistic battles with unions.

The unions have done well at the bargaining table so far--in the winter, two signed for wage increases of 7.6 and 8.5 per cent, with additional bonuses for late-shift work. The negotiations are still going on, with the University Police and the dining hall cooks.

The cooks are an interesting and unusual case. After a quiet power struggle over the past year, Harvard dining hall workers have wrested negotiating power from their 81-year-old business agent in Boston, a man who first organized at Harvard in the late 30's. The cooks are asking for a 50-cent-per-hour pay hike.

Meanwhile, at the NLRB, a hearing that has dragged on all spring is staggering toward a conclusion. The hearing involves an attempt by clerical and technical workers in the Medical Area to form a union--an attempt Harvard opposes, saying the only appropriate union of clerical and technical workers would be a University-wide one.

There are several thousand workers in that category here, all non-unionized, and although they got hefty 10-per-cent raises this year some of them are still working toward unionization.

At the end of the year William N. Mullins, Harvard's manager of employee relations, resigned, saying his job needs reorganization and reexamination because of its complexity.

And reorganization it got: next year, labor relations will be the responsibility of someone working for Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, switched away from Stephen S.J. Hall, vice president for administration.