Union Enters Negotiations

Following a year of budget cuts and layoffs, Harvard has entered into contract negotiations with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), which is demanding increased job security and benefits.

The three-year contract between the University and the 4,800-member union of administrative, secretarial and clerical workers expires June 30.

The union has recently criticized the University’s Allston development schedule, claiming that it is “aggressive” and “worrisome” because of the budget restrictions it has imposed on departments across the University. These cuts have translated into widespread layoffs for HUCTW workers as departments restructure operations.

“Virtually all [administrative departments] have reduced staffing,” said Bill Jaeger, director of HUCTW. “Some have had to do that by laying people off. At a lot of those functions, everyone’s working harder and harder, and doing more complicated work with very constrained resources.”

Aside from talking about these budget cut layoffs, HUCTW will also be negotiating wage increases, housing assistance and educational and training benefits with the University for a new three-year agreement.

“We’re negotiating pretty intensely at this point, and having conversations everyday,” said Jaeger, who sits on the eight-person committee charged with negotiating the new contract. “We want to reach an agreement sometime in the next few weeks.”

Jaeger said that while the bulk of the contract will change “very little,” these intense discussions will likely yield some significant improvements in worker security and educational opportunities in the new contract.

A SMOOTHER TRANSITION

Work security, which Jaeger said has been one of the most contentious issues on the table, has become a major rallying point for all campus unions.

Individual union members have organized numerous rallies throughout the year protesting the layoffs. A student-worker rally held last Friday drew over 150 protestors.

“The most significant change or new direction that we’re hoping for in this agreement is that we really want to strengthen the whole work security idea, and try to make it a real certain thing that if your job is eliminated you can move into another Harvard job,” Jaeger said.

“There’s [currently] no penalty prescribed for failure to comply with work security,” he said.

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.”

But Shamim Morani, an executive HUCTW board member who also serves on the negotiating committee, said that the current provisions have not been enforced throughout the University.

She said that the union’s current work security rules “started going sour about three years ago.”

“There were these massive layoffs and people weren’t getting jobs at Harvard. We found that the whole thing was falling apart,” Morani said.

“When you leave things to good faith, it doesn’t work,” she added, pointing to the decentralized administration at Harvard as the reason why laid-off employees have been falling through the cracks.

Morani said the contract, negotiated in 2001, called for a committee to monitor layoff cases, but these responsibilities have been skirted by the University.

She said that the current negotiations should strengthen the University’s dedication to that oversight. Prior to the recent round of negotiations that began in October, a subcommittee was formed in response to the lapse in work security enforcement.

Morani said that another work security provision in the current contract—an extension of wages and benefits for up to three months for laid-off employees looking for work—has failed in its aim to deter the University from laying off employees.

“It doesn’t really happen like that. Harvard took it in their stride, they just carried on, and added it to their costs,” Morani said.

Another recommendation submitted to the contract negotiating committee was a proposal to reinforce the need for a pre-layoffs warning so that the union has time to respond.

“Before they lay off people, they have to tell the union about it so they can figure something out, so we could examine and explore other ways of saving the money other than through the layoffs,” Morani said. “They hadn’t been doing that always.”

Though Morani and Jaeger said they are trying to negotiate policies that will deter or cushion layoffs, some HUCTW members said they would prefer that the union instead negotiate for the ultimate work security: a no-layoffs clause.

“A lot of us feel like it’s not a good enough [work security] policy and it should be changed to a no-layoffs clause in the contract,” said Geoff Carens, a HUCTW member who is active in the No Layoffs Campaign, a group composed of workers and students that has organized several protests this year.

“I just think people would be in a much better position if the union…organized from a position of strength,” Carens said. “We’ve had no [official] rallies, no public actions by the union leadership. Instead it’s just backroom deals, behind closed doors, which is profoundly wrong.”

ALSO ON THE TABLE

According to Jaeger and Morani, however, the union has made earnest efforts to involve the Harvard community in the negotiations.

Last month, for instance, union representatives handed out flyers explaining the issues on the negotiating table to students.

Although much of the flyer was devoted to describing the budget crunch caused by Harvard’s expansion, it also called for more reliable training opportunities, wider educational benefits and housing assistance for employees.

Under the Tuition Assistance Program, the 2001 contract guaranteed employees with at least one year of service the opportunity to take up to two Harvard courses per term.

The program also required the University to reimburse staff members for courses taken at other institutions, as long as the total cost was under $5,250 per calendar year.

The negotiations leading up to that contract resulted in the creation of the Harvard Academy of Workforce Education, which would oversee job training and skill development programs at the University.

According to Jaeger and Morani, the current negotiations may strengthen those provisions, granting employees even more educational opportunities within the University and elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of young people in the work force, and lot of people going back to school,” Morani said.

In addition, the question of housing assistance, which would ease the burden of high Cambridge rent, was not mentioned in the previous contract, although it was broached during the last round of negotiations.

Union representatives would not comment on the specifics of the housing proposal, but last month’s flyer referred to the introduction of “innovative programs to help staff with the difficulties of the housing market in the Boston area.”

“I pay almost half of my take home for my rent, because I’m living in Cambridge,” said Marcia Deihl, a librarian at Harvard for 20 years. “That’s not Harvard’s fault. [Housing] would be my dream issue in a contract.”

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

As the negotiating team hammers out the final points of the upcoming contract, the details of the new programs remain under wraps due to a confidentiality agreement with the University.

Some members of the union object to the closed nature of the negotiations, demanding a more active role for regular union members.

“There isn’t much sharing of info with membership,” Carens said. “That’s not a strong effective strategy to win a good contract. You have to try to reach out to all the rank-and-file members, and the way to do that is to make them feel like they can influence the way negotiations happen.”

But Morani said that the union’s methods of negotiation have worked for them so far, citing the 150 percent increase in wages HUCTW members have seen since the union’s foundation 15 years ago.

The “militant” nature of the No Layoffs Campaign is an ineffective strategy in dealing with an entity as big as the University, Morani said.

“We’re not combative in that sense because we feel that we don’t work best in that way…That’s not our way of working, and I don’t know how much pressure it places on the University to change their approach. Our approach has worked very well in the University to get us all the things we have.”

If negotiations are completed on schedule, the new contract will go into effect on July 1, at the start of Fiscal Year 2005.

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.

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