Gilligan Says Union Is Model Of Women's Different Voice

Kris Rondeau, chief organizer of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), asserts that "Women are transforming the labor movement." And she adds that HUCTW, as a union organized by women and for women, is helping to accomplish that transformation.

But the union organizer recognizes that women cannot embrace the labor union movement without reconciling doubts about their place in it. Rondeau told a group of about 100 women last week that while "women are in the workplace on a permanent basis, we have the market cornered on self-doubt and guilt."

These apparent contradictions between the strength of the new, women-oriented labor movement and women's lack of confidence fit into the theory of women's psychology first articulated by Harvard School of Education Professor Carol Gilligan.

Gilligan, a feminist scholar who wrote the groundbreaking work, In a Different Voice, said in a recent interview that HUCTW's organizing style, with its emphasis on personal communication and flexibility, is a classic example of women's distinctive approach.

Gilligan's research shows that women differ from men in the way they handle most situations, and that they are more creative problem-solvers.

The Harvard union movement represents a move by women to speak for themselves and to take their work seriously rather than just caring for others and hoping that they will be taken care of by the University, Gilligan says. "For many women that feels selfish and dangerous," she says.

The fact that the support staff workers at Harvard, who are 83 percent female, have found a voice and are able to speak for themselves about their concerns is an important act in itself, Gilligan says. "The emphasis on connection, speaking, voice, creating a union by creating relationships rather than creating a union by rules is the essence of what I write about in my book, In A Different Voice," Gilligan says.

The 10-year-old girls whom Gilligan interviewed for her book have a distinctive voice from their male counterparts. When faced with a moral decision, girls and women tended to view the solution in less "either-or" terms, Gilligan says.

And Gilligan says that the lessons of her research have been born out at Harvard during the union campaign.

The standard response from these young girls is that there must be another way to solve the problem, she says. "The same vision that this 10-year-old girl had has been considered naive and unworkable in the past," Gilligan says. But this is the exact approach that has been successful for HUCTW in organizing the women clerical workers, she says.

Rondeau, who is perhaps more responsible than anyone else for the unique organizing formula developed by HUCTW, says that "Women make good organizers. Their personalities are flexible. They have unimaginable stamina. They make good listeners and are through."

Even the University's chief negotiator, Lamont University Professor Emeritus John T. Dunlop, concedes that the union's "emphasis on discourse" stems from its attempts to organize a workforce that is primarily female.

"Organizing women has been difficult for traditional industrial unions," Harvard labor expert Charles Heckscher says. HUCTW has broken from the traditional labor mold, according to Heckscher. "It has not stressed adversarial, combative tactics. It has stressed self-determination and involvement of people, rather than association with a powerful group," he says.

HUCTW organizers say that they have spent the past 17 years putting this philosophy of communication into action--organizing one-to-one, meeting with support staff for coffee breaks and lunch breaks, preferring personal contact to the massmailing strategies of other unions.

"In the union drive, we've said all along we're not the 'me' generation," Rondeau says.

And Dunlop says, "the quiet, decentralized way of organizing is quite distinctive."

To Gilligan these non-traditional organizing techniques are a direct response to the largely female composition of the union's leadership and constituency.

"The word union in this case means coming together rather than power block," Gilligan says. "Women need one another if they are to remain clear and connected to themselves as well," she adds.

"Women have always been attentive to others," Gilligan says. "These workers have tried to move from the stance of 'we will be good and Harvard will take care of us' to the truth," she adds.

It was important for Harvard women to organize themselves into this union, Gilligan says, because "the tendency is to not hear oneself in the Harvard community where the male voices are very strong and articulate."