Union Victory Gives Spark To 'Pink-Collar' Organizing

When President Bok last week announced that the University would not appeal a judge's decision upholding last spring's support staff union victory, he cleared the way for contract negotiations to begin by the end of the year.

And this final victory for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), labor experts say, is a hopeful sign for America's flagging organized labor movement.

The 3400-member HUCTW will become the largest union in private higher education. In addition, it is the latest successful organizing drive to capitalize on the unique concerns of a "pink-collar" workforce, like Harvard's quasi-professional, mostly female support staff.

Throughout the past five years that HUCTW has been organizing on the entire campus, labor experts have been watching the campaign, predicting that even if the Harvard union was not certified, the campaign itself would introduce a new kind of organizing into the national labor movement.

HUCTW appealed to the University's workers through one-on-one meetings where organizers stressed issues of workplace democracy and the particular concerns of an 83 percent female support staff.

"The most important union trend is the feminization of union membership," said Northeastern labor scholar Karl Klare. "Women make up nearly half the labor market and jobs opening up are expected to be predominantly filled by women. This campaign encourages hopeful signs of what's going on for women in labor."

President Bok's decision to accept the union and go ahead with first contract negotiations merely strengthened the impact the campaign will have, labor experts said.

"There is a whole new union vocabulary, weaving together the best traditions of the past--solidarity and unity--with a new idea for today--empowerment," said Klare. "HUCTW is not the only union in this new tradition, but it's very important. There is a national trend and this can only help."

By stressing worker empowerment and democracy, experts say that HUCTW was able to convey another increasingly popular message for the labor movement--the idea that the employer does not have to be the enemy.

With its well-touted slogan "It's not anti-Harvard to be pro-union," HUCTW was also a pioneer campaign for this strategy. The union organizers did not try to convince workers that Harvard was a bad employer, instead they suggested that the University would be a better employer if its workers had a voice.

"It was decentralized and positive organizing rather than centralized and negative," said Professor Clyde Somers, a labor scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "That's always been a model, but it has not been as widespread a form of practical organizing."

HUCTW organized the support staff using 18 full-time organizers, most of whom had been University employees, who spent each day moving around campus, talking to support staff. They distributed almost no printed literature, but relied instead on the one-on-one meetings to recruit supporters.

Somers said that other university support staff may look to HUCTW as a model, just as organizers here used the Yale support staff union as an example of a successful campaign. Experts said HUCTW's victory will reinforce the example set by Yale.

"At least people will be aware of it, and those who have some inclination to unionize will know it is possible," Somers said. "It will be hard for other universities to argue that unionization is unprofessional or unacademic after Harvard and Yale."