Harvard: An Impersonal Employer

LABOR RELATIONS are very smooth on the surface. In the past three years employees have only gone on strike once, but they've considered it several times. Union members have ratified their contracts, if not on the first go-round, then on the second.

The most recent labor dispute between the University and the people who staff its dining halls raises a number of disturbing questions about the underside of labor relations at Harvard. Granted, the exchange between the dining hall workers' union, Local 26, and the University negotiators has, to say the least, never been what anyone would term cordial. Nevertheless, the course of the recent negotiations reveals Harvard's consistently hard-line, legalistic and impersonal attitude towards organized employees.

In the Bok administration's seven-year tenure Harvard has employed a combination of legal expertise and an aggressive and intimidating bargaining style to either deflect or squelch labor discontent. Harvard's experienced legal staff delayed organizing efforts in the Medical Area and at Harvard's teaching hospitals with a long series of court battles. When delaying tactics fail, the University often resorts to subtle intimidation, perfectly legal, of course. In the case of organizing efforts at the teaching hospitals, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the director of the union, accusing him of assault--a charge the judge later threw out of court. When Harvard's Buildings and Grounds maintenance employees went on strike last spring, the University forced them back on the job on a legal technicality--the able lawyers had inserted a clause in their contract requiring that the B&G Union give the University 30 days notice before striking. But the contract had run out and it was unclear whether the verbal agreement included the 30 day clause. Harvard also slapped the wrists of striking B&G workers by levying disciplinary penalties of suspension without pay.

In the long negotiations with the kitchen workers, the University continued its tactical marriage of legal expertise and threat. Harvard negotiators resolutely refused to improve the kitchen workers' benefits package because the University is conducting a benefits review. More talk, more committee meetings, more study, a long, drawn-out process that guarantees nothing to the worker. When the union membership refused to ratify the contract without a compromise on benefits and openly expressed a lack of faith in University promises, Edward W. Powers, Harvard's chief labor negotiator, threatened to withdraw wage concessions. And the union fell into line. Powers also repeatedly accused the union's chief shop steward of "bad faith negotiating" because he revealed his dissatisfaction with the contract. Relations between the two deteriorated so severely during the negotiations that Powers barely troubled to hide his contempt. In the aftermath of the heated contract debate, kitchen workers remain quietly frustrated. So did the printing workers after they reluctantly accepted their contract last spring, and B&G workers say the abortive strike still rankles.

DISAGREEMENTS between labor and management are nothing to write home about. But the undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the University has not always existed, many workers say. They point to the administration of former President Nathan M. Pusey '28 (one certainly not free of all labor troubles) as a time of relative harmony. The workers swallowed the negotiated agreements, however imperfect, because of identification with the Harvard community and a personal relationship with the University administrators. "President Pusey had the philosophy that students and staff were part of the same Harvard community, and he could relate to the lowest of the supporting staff," one kitchen worker said. "Bok looks by you when he walks, and Pusey would say hello to the lowliest worker. Pusey would and could chew you out, but he approached you as a human being," the worker added.

President Pusey himself says he does not remember serious labor conflicts. "They were all my friends," he says. "I happen to have liked these people and I knew a lot of them. I was always conscious of the important role every employee played in the institution." A tinge of paternalism may have colored Pusey's remarks and characterized his administration. But, as General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 points out, fiscal and legal developments of recent years have made the University a more bureaucratic institution.

In the past ten years, Congress has extended laws that regulate unemployment compensation, hiring practices and labor-management relations to universities. At the same time, it has slashed their federal funding. These changes have made the University a more impersonal place, Steiner says. "It's unfortunate, but it's a recognizable fact. This place isn't as homey as it used to be." The workers evidently liked it better the way it used to be.

When President Bok replaced Pusey in 1971, he reorganized the University's administrative structure to accomodate these changes.. This included a shake-up of employee relations, staff. For Pusey's director of personnel, Bok substituted in-house lawyers--Steiner as general counsel and Power as associate general counsel--to handle legal issues related to employees. "There was a definite conscious attempt at reorganization," Powers says. "Bok made this a more business-oriented university, and brought in people to make it more businesslike," he adds.

This new businesslike crew took a look at the allocation of University finances and decided that Harvard couldn't afford some of its labor costs. "We used to have one custodian assigned to each building. They got to know everyone, and it was very nice and very personalized, but we decided we couldn't afford it anymore. Of course workers felt life had changed for the worse, but unfortunately it's inevitable," Powers says.

BUT WORKER discontent is more than sentimental longing for a halcyon era. Many employees feel the University puts money considerations before their welfare. And they also sense a change in the philosophy of the administration--a new willingness to use the big stick. Powers admits there has been a change in tactics, but denies that workers are being treated unfairly. "I would say there's a change in philosophy in the sense we bargain more aggressively. My job is to negotiate the kind of agreements the administration wants," Powers says. He obviously sees himself as the administration advocate, while workers say his predecessors viewed themselves as mediators, or even protectors of worker interests.

It is indeed a far cry from the paternalism of Pusey, for Powers is a tough negotiator. But toughness can become an obsession. By trying to maintain a hard-line image, Powers may have forgotten compromise can be as effective a bargaining tool as intimidation. Steiner says, "It would be a major concern to me if we had a bitter relationship with our employees."

Although Harvard workers are not bitterly alienated from the University, many are dissatisfied and frustrated with the University's seeming lack of respect for their needs. Harvard should re-think its negotiating style and tactics. If it doesn't, Steiner may have something to worry about.