Union Ties Won't Affect Harvard Labor Programs

The decision by a national union to back the organizing effort of Harvard's clerical workers will not alter the University's relationship with a labor education program and endowment closely linked to that union, both union and Harvard officials said this week.

For 25 years the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has been sending its leaders to Harvard sponsored programs on labor. Five years ago the union established a $1 million endowment at Harvard in honor of their late president Jerry Wurf. This year AFSCME is funding an effort to organize the University's clerical workers.

But Harvard doesn't want the union's latest gift.

Last week the 1.1 million member AFSCME announced it would back the effort of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), which has been trying for 15 years to organize 3800 Harvard support staff. It has already given the local union $500,000 and called the Harvard organizing effort their "premier organizing drive" for this year.

Harvard administrators have opposed the organization of its clerical workers, saying that a union would make labor costs prohibitive and would turn "good labor relations into adversarial ones."

Harvard scholars have worked closely with union leaders. Each year three or four AFSCME leaders attend the Harvard Trade Union Program to study union related topics in the 10-week session. AFSCME also sends its members to shorter labor training programs run by the Kennedy School of Government.

The affiliation between AFSCME and HUCTW began when one of the national union's leaders, while at the K-School, saw a poster advertising the local union's effort to organize Harvard workers, said a source close to AFSCME.

But spokesmen for the national union said that their financial and organizational support for the local union will have no effect on their involvement in Harvard's academic programs.

"Harvard education and other activities bearlittle or no relation to Harvard as a manager andtheir employee policy," said Jack Howard,assistant to the AFSCME president. "We'rebargaining with the administration, meanwhile theacademic institution keeps flowing."

The Harvard Trade Union Program, which trains30 union leaders each year, is housed next door toHUCTW headquarters on Winthrop Street. But the46-year-old program that is led by Harvard laborscholars and attended by AFSCME members, amongother labor leaders, will not be affected by theunion organizing effort, said the program'sexecutive director Linda Kaboolian.

"If the clerical workers organize it won'teffect something else to do with unions on campus.It won't effect the people who teach about uniontopics," said Kaboolian, who added that althoughthe union program is taught by some Harvardprofessors, it is self-sufficient financially.

The University's chief labor administrator saidHarvard's antiunion stance will not affectteaching. Harvard "won't insist" that professorswho support labor become anti-union, said RobertH. Scott, vice president of administration.

One such pro-labor scholar happens to beScott's boss. President Bok, who began his Harvardcareer as a labor-relations expert and professorof law, co-authored a book with Lamont UniversityProfessor John T. Dunlop on the importance ofunionization and collective bargaining.

"Unions have made what is perhaps theirgreatest contribution in securing fairer treatmentfor their members at the workplace," wrote Bok andDunlop in the book, called "Labor and the AmericanCommunity." "The problems of unions are problemsfor all of us and in our varying ways we mustsurmount them together or not at all."

In the book, which was published in 1970, Bokand Dunlop urged universities to communicate withunion leaders and set up training programs onunion concerns. Dunlop is one of the chiefscholars involved with Harvard's Trade UnionProgram.

"Bok used to be in this business [of laborrelations]," said Scott, adding "I don't think[Bok] thinks that unionization of the clericalworkers is a good idea.