Dunlop, Union Official Attend Work Summit

A national conference on the future of the workplace held yesterday and Sunday had a few faces familiar to Harvard on the guest list.

The Conference on the Future of the American Workplace, co-sponsored by the Commerce Department and the Labor Department, consisted of representatives from both business and labor who were invited to Chicago to discuss new forms of labor management relations.

Such discussion is hardly new at Harvard, where the last five years has seen the formation of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and the creation of innovative labor-management "joint councils." At the same time, though, the University has also seen months of sometimes tense negotiations between Harvard and the clerical union over contract terms and other matters.

Lamont University Professor Emeritus John I Dunlop, head of Clinton's Committee on the Future of Worker Management relations, attended the conference, as did clerical union organizer Kristine Rondeau. Union president Donene M. Williams was invited as well, union director Bill Jaeger said yesterday.

"She was invited but was unable to attend because she was on vacation out of the state," Jaeger said.

A statement released by the Department of Labor called it "a working session that will help define the shape of the workplace of the future, identify the benefits of the new workplace and barriers to adoption and discuss public and private strategies for encouraging its implementation."

The conference consisted of four sessions, two of which were run by Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown and two of which were run by Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, a former Kennedy School of Government lecturer. President Clinton spoke to the conference attendees yesterday afternoon.

Dunlop, who along with Rondeau helped to craft the original agreement between the University and the union in 1989, emphasized that he was attending in his role as head of the Clinton administrative committee, not as a Harvard professor or former negotiator.

"It's mainly a program to give visibility to these kind of workplace arrangements," he said.

"I think from that point of view, it's been a success in doing that... It's clear most of these plans were instituted [as a] result of some crisis."

Dunlop said many of the business representatives were from well-known companies such as Levi-Strauss.

"The theme is the characteristics of these new employment involvement plans at the workplace," he said. "They involve training, they involve worker participation, they involve attention to health and safety, they sometimes involve the sharing of gains, they involve [worker-management] teams... they involve shortened hierarchy of management."

Rondeau could not be reached for comment yesterday

"She was invited but was unable to attend because she was on vacation out of the state," Jaeger said.

A statement released by the Department of Labor called it "a working session that will help define the shape of the workplace of the future, identify the benefits of the new workplace and barriers to adoption and discuss public and private strategies for encouraging its implementation."

The conference consisted of four sessions, two of which were run by Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown and two of which were run by Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, a former Kennedy School of Government lecturer. President Clinton spoke to the conference attendees yesterday afternoon.

Dunlop, who along with Rondeau helped to craft the original agreement between the University and the union in 1989, emphasized that he was attending in his role as head of the Clinton administrative committee, not as a Harvard professor or former negotiator.

"It's mainly a program to give visibility to these kind of workplace arrangements," he said.

"I think from that point of view, it's been a success in doing that... It's clear most of these plans were instituted [as a] result of some crisis."

Dunlop said many of the business representatives were from well-known companies such as Levi-Strauss.

"The theme is the characteristics of these new employment involvement plans at the workplace," he said. "They involve training, they involve worker participation, they involve attention to health and safety, they sometimes involve the sharing of gains, they involve [worker-management] teams... they involve shortened hierarchy of management."

Rondeau could not be reached for comment yesterday