Harvard, Union Cut New Deal

After almost nine months of intensive negotiations with the University, leaders of the largest workers’ union at Harvard have settled on the preliminary terms of a new three-year contract, which promises their 4,800 members improved work security, salary hikes and increased benefits.

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) announced the agreement yesterday in a joint statement with the University, establishing yearly wage increases and a new, centralized office that will enforce hiring preference for workers facing layoffs across Harvard.

“My expectation would be that it’s going to be a very popular agreement,” HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger said. “We started yesterday having some meetings, and the reaction has been wildly positive so far. We’ve been keeping in close touch with our members, and I think people knew that it was a difficult negotiation.”

According to the statement, union members will be able to vote on the proposal on June 17, and if ratified, the new contract will go into effect on July 1.

HUCTW—which includes librarians, secretaries and other administrative employees—found itself having to shield members from widespread layoffs andshield members from widespread layoffs and budget cuts implemented across the University this year. The impending June 30 expiration of the current contract has allowed the union an opportunity to demand worker protections.

Jaeger said the tentatively titled Office of Work Security Case Management will ensure that laid-off workers are given priority for open positions within Harvard.

The new office will be jointly staffed by union and University professionals who will oversee hiring situations and train supervisors to adhere to the work security program, according to Jaeger.

“This was the most important policy issue for a lot of people in our union,” he said. “I think we strengthened work security a great deal. We did what we set out to do, and made it a much surer thing that someone facing layoffs could move to another Harvard job.”

HUCTW’s current work security provisions mandate that “based on their history of proven contributions, displaced staff members will be given hiring preference over outside candidates for any vacant job for which they are suitably qualified.”

According to Jaeger, however, the lack of centralized enforcement in the past allowed many laid-off workers to slip through the cracks, rendering the well-intentioned program largely ineffective.

Jaeger said that while all of the union’s work security goals were met, the University did obtain some compromises in the area of salary increases.

Although the proposed salary terms will give unionized staff a relatively high 4.5-percent wage increase for the contract’s first two years and an additional, compounded 5-percent increase for the third, employees will not see any change to their salaries until November 2004—four months after the new contract goes into effect.

“We think it’s a good compromise,” Jaeger said. “It’s a little bit hard for our members to wait for a few months, but the good thing about this arrangement is that once those salaries are increased, that’s a permanent structural change.”

The delay, which according to former union leader Karen O’Brien stands to save the University several million dollars, was largely prompted by the development in Allston and improvements in the science department. Those costs have squeezed the University’s budget this year despite its famously large endowment, and expenses have been cut at almost every level of the University.

Jaeger said the new contract’s salary increases are determined by a “structural” portion, which will guarantee employees a 2-percent yearly hike, and a “progression” portion, which will add between $900 and $1,300 dollars to each worker’s salary depending on his or her pay grade. The “structural” increase is meant to counter inflation and adjust for cost of living, while the “progression” increase will slide employees higher in their pay scale as they gain seniority.

Despite the University’s financial constraints, the union was able to win a host of new benefits for its employees during this year’s negotiations, gaining funding for childcare subsidies and housing assistance for workers who are renting or buying a home for the first time.

University Director of Labor Relations Bill Murphy said both negotiating teams were happy with their results and confident that the new contract will be ratified by a wide margin.

“Both sides walked out from these negotiations feeling like we’ve worked well together,” he said. “You’re always balancing what’s fair for the workers versus what’s needed for the University as it’s going forward.”

Some union members, however, including O’Brien, expressed disappointment with the proposal, vowing to vote against it in June.

“They believe that it’s our responsibility to help Harvard save money because somehow that will help us,” O’Brien said.

Now a unionized library assistant in Technical Services, O’Brien has sat on the HUCTW negotiating team in past years.

“We should have fought for something to be in the contract that basically says, ‘No layoffs,’” she said. “We should have been mobilized to be able to do that.”

O’Brien decried the union’s negotiating style, calling for more member involvement and openness throughout the process.

“You’re supposed to poll the members, go to Harvard, and have the members behind you,” she said. “Our current leadership doesn’t run it like that. It’s undemocratic, and it’s wrong.”

Geoff Carens, meanwhile, a library worker in Government Documents, said he did not rule out the possibility of a union-wide strike if the new contract was not ratified. Still, he conceded that such an outcome was unlikely.

“No matter how bad it is, the contract usually passes,” he said.

Jaeger refused to respond to those criticisms, citing the much weaker position of non-unionized administrative workers at Harvard, who will see only a 1- or 2-percent pay increase this year.

“I think a lot of people know it’s a hard, uncertain time,” he said, “But the 2001 agreement was ratified by about an 85-percent majority and I think the early indications say that this might be an even more heavily supported agreement.”

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.