Let HUCTW Join Benefits Task Force

If you have a lot of time to kill and happen to pick up a copy of a University-run propaganda sheet called the Harvard Gazette, you're more than likely to read something about how Harvard is spending too much on benefits. If the trend increases, the richest University in the universe says with a straight face, a financial crisis will ensue.

That's just plain wrong, and the people who run Harvard know it.

In putting together a task force last year to perform a comprehensive review of the way Harvard pays employee benefits, Provost Jerry R. Green failed to include representatives of the people who would be hurt most by ill-conceived changes in benefits: the workers. He was careful, however, to include a number of highly-paid administrators in the group--the kind of people who will be least affected by a shift in benefits policy.

The leadership of the University's largest union, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, is now complaining that the exclusion was deliberate, and the facts make it hard to disagree with them.

While the task force was formed in the spring, the union wasn't contacted by Green for so much as consultation. In fact, HUCTW officials took the initiative in calling the provost in late October.

"We were the ones who contacted the provost after he sent a letter to employees," HUCTW President Donene Williams said last week. "We responded by contacting him because this letter alarmed a large number of our members."

Green and other administrators twist themselves into rhetorical knots to explain why they haven't included the union in the task force. Their latest line is that in some way, union members and officials don't have the time or "expertise" necessary to serve on the task force. Given that administrators all but concede the task force will recommend cutting some benefits, perhaps this argument is right in a twisted way.

Workers have proven notoriously inept at devising ways to screw themselves.

The provost justifies his end run around the union by saying he has offered the workers input through "advisory groups." Of course, no one--not even Green--appears to know for sure who exactly is on the groups (administrators haven't been able to produce a list) or when they meet (Green thinks three times a month; Administrative Dean of the Faculty Nancy L. Maull thinks three times a season).

What's really going on here? Harvard is building--and none too subtly--a case for cutting the benefits that many of Harvard's workers depend on for day-to-day survival. Of course, to make that case, the University must talk out of both sides of its mouth.

One Tuesday last month, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles told a meeting of professors that generally speaking, things were looking up financially. The very next day, Knowles released figures on benefits to the Faculty Council which showed an only recently-discovered $52 million deficit in the fund for fringe benefits, and one administrator talked of a crisis.

Expect to see more silly games like this as long as the administration remains hell-bent on excluding the workers from their benefits review. It's a silly game that's being played.

We think now is the time to stop the games before the most financially vulnerable members of our community--the workers--get hurt.

Workers or their representatives should be able to help in deciding what kind of benefits they will get. Provost Green should add HUCTW representatives to his task force immediately.