Amid Crisis, Workers Defy Union Image

August, 1985 marked the birth of an independent union self-organized by Harvard’s “forgotten workers.” It was nascent in every sense of the word: a couple hundred staffers led by a few unpaid organizers, with no financial backing and no official space. The organization lacked even a name.

When one practical member suggested “The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers,” most members took offense at the resulting unwieldy acronym: “HUCTW.” But a 24-year-old named Bill Jaeger stepped forward to express support for the “awkward but accurate” approach—and others took notice.

When Jaeger arrived at Harvard in 1984 to work as a staff assistant in what was then known as the Russian Research Center, the Soviet relations and arms-control junkie had graduate school in mind. Unimpressed with the overt antagonism of unions during his undergraduate years at Yale, Jaeger says he felt “pretty skeptical” of his Harvard colleagues’ union activity. But something was different at his new workplace. A year after his arrival, Jaeger left his staff position to work full-time as a union organizer, finding time even to serve as lead lyricist of the ‘Pipettes,’ the union’s singing group.

“There was critical analysis of Harvard [by the Union] but no effort to breed or encourage hostility,” Jaeger said in an interview in the 1990s. “Nobody tried to make me feel angry at Harvard, which was good because I didn’t feel angry.”

When HUCTW was young, in the ’80s, Harvard administrators actively campaigned against the union, which consequently found itself pushed to the margins as an outsider group of negligible influence. Back then, involvement was a test of bravery: “It was bold and scary to be involved in the union at that point because there was this feeling that the powerful University was against it,” Jaeger says.

That outlier status is largely gone now, traded in the late 1990s for the greater benefits of legitimate recognition—what Jaeger calls “a defined place in the institution.” The key to the exchange, Jaeger says, was collaboration and understanding—the same kind of communicative sentiment that he now espouses as the union’s director.

“I feel like we wore them down because the constructive partnership and mutual respect were always the goal and vision that the union had,” Jaeger says. “We had to pursue that persistently for a lot of years before the administration really took us seriously and believed that we were really doing what we said we were doing.”

For Jaeger, then, a patient respect for the administration isn’t just a flavor-of-the-month strategy: it’s a proven method, with the weight of decades behind it. It’s the reason why HUCTW has survived and grown to the size it has: approximately 4,800 strong, with staffers hailing from every niche of the University. It is, in short, one of the core missions of the union. “There are two things we care a lot about: one is to be strong advocates for the interest of the staff, and the other is to be responsible partners with the administration,” Jaeger says.

When the two objectives fall easily in line, the job is a smooth one. But when one side has to make tough choices at the expense of the other, things unfold a little less clearly. In the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis, when job cuts at the University seem inevitable and the union’s role is more important then ever, the balancing act—between effective partnership with the University and aggressive advocacy to save jobs—is a difficult one. For Jaeger, the man charged with maintaining the uneasy equilibrium, the job has not gotten any easier.

“It’s absolutely possible,” he says, “for us to be too flabby or too strident.”

AN UNPLEASANT REALITY

The thinking of the union leadership has shifted considerably over the past five months—from optimism that members could weather the fiscal storm without suffering too many ill effects, to sober recognition that sacrifices will have to be made to bring the University back into the black. “We were more hopeful originally that any changes in the staffing pattern or reductions would be incremental or spotty,” Jaeger says. “But it’s become clear in the past few months, it’s worse than that.”

The one policy decision that has most influenced the union’s evolving approach towards the possibility of layoffs—“the big enchilada,” Jaeger calls it—was a March announcement that funding from the endowment, Harvard’s multi-billion dollar treasury, would decline by more than 15 percent over the next two years.

The news was sobering University-wide. For the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest school, which comprises about a third of the union’s membership, the news was particularly bleak—FAS relies on endowment funding for over half of its annual budget, third-most among the University’s 11 schools. “A bad day,” Jaeger calls the date when the payout decision was announced. In fact, it was probably more than that: the first clear signal of how difficult it would be for HUCTW to ensure that its members would escape the financial crisis unscathed.

“It would be tragically foolish for the University to continue spending money on the same trajectory. It’s inevitable that Harvard has to change,” Jaeger says. “Is it possible to resolve financial challenges this deep without anybody being laid off?”

Jaeger, in all his practicality, seems to lean toward a ‘no.’ Union leaders have begun to schedule meetings with schools and departments that have told them they are considering changes that could result in involuntary layoffs, according to Jaeger. Otherwise, concrete information has been meager.

Because administrators have been wary about discussing any impending layoffs, union leadership has been forced to go into information-seeking mode for the last several months with mixed results, bringing into sharp relief the necessity that collaboration be a two-way street. “Where there’s strong [University] leadership, it’s working,” says HUCTW executive board member Linda Kluz of labor-management discussions. “But where there’s no leadership, there is no information forthcoming.”

Even Jaeger admits that the gross ramifications of the financial decline have alerted the union to the absence of University leadership when it comes to thinking beyond calculations and figures. “The main thing [central administrators] really do is set that number,” Jaeger says. “We wish they were doing more than that to really lead or to advise the schools and departments as to how to cope.”

LAY OFF THOSE LAYOFFS

But even in tough times, Jaeger hasn’t discarded his conviction that relationships with administrators are a far more powerful tool than “shouting through the windows.” He was struck by some of the parallels between the cutbacks unveiled on the FAS Web site last month and a few of the union’s suggestions in their public letters. For example, in a December letter, the union leadership called for the closing of leased commercial spaces and slashing of catering budgets—both of which will be implemented next year.

“That’s gratifying,” Jaeger says. “We didn’t invent those ideas, for sure, but I feel like our union has had some influence in our written communications and in our meetings with senior administrators.”

As one of the top leaders of the union, Jaeger meets regularly with FAS Dean for Administration and Finance Brett C. Sweet and Associate Dean for Administrative Resources Geoffrey Peters. HUCTW leaders have also cultivated access to mid-level deans like FAS Administrative Dean for Science Russ Porter and FAS Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities Sara Oseasohn, Jaeger says.

The onus is usually on the union to reach out and make relationships, rather than the other way around, says Kluz. “I wouldn’t say it’s both sides reaching out to each other. I’d say management is responding to our requests as best they can,” she says. “Of course, Bill and other officers of the union are the ones that are approaching the administration and trying to get information from the top all the way down.”

At the least, union leaders expect the University to protect “its people” by focusing on non-personnel cuts and leaving layoffs as a last resort. Local administrators are contractually required to engage the union in conversation and negotiation whenever they are considering specific layoffs. Called “consultation when considering,” the agreement gives affected staffers the opportunity to understand the reasons behind the proposed job cut.

If administrators decide to cut a staffer after consultation, the laid off individual is placed under the union’s work security program—an offering HUCTW hopes to strengthen—which gives former staffers hiring preference over outside candidates with similar qualifications competing for open positions within the University. In most of the conversations with administrators these past few months, union officials have been emphasizing the importance of the program. “That needs some talking,” Jaeger says. But not all of his colleagues believe that talking is the answer.

NOT ONE UNION, DIVISIBLE

Geoffrey Carens is a microtext reproduction specialist. Most weekdays, he sits at a reference desk in Lamont Library and assists students in operating the digital scanners. Save for a lunchtime jaunt, Carens has barely seen the light of day by the time he emerges from the library at 9 p.m.

But the library is only a day job. Within the staff community at Harvard, Geoff Carens is a well-known rabble-rouser who has garnered a reputation as a radical leftist. Over the years, Carens and a core group of about 10 HUCTW members—collectively known as “Reform HUCTW”—have waged public counter-attacks against the University. The battle cry has grown even stronger in a time of marked financial strain.

Mention the group to most unionized staffers in the know, and the reactions will undoubtedly fall into one of three categories: enthusiastic agreement from fellow activists, uncomfortable wariness (“Yeah, I think they’re a little hard-edge,” says executive board member Scott Lozier), and gentle dismissal.

“It seems like they just fight for fighting’s sake,” says a union representative who requested to not be named in order to preserve her relations with union members. “It’s not that I dislike them—they’re like a curiosity, really.”

Whenever the topic of the radical faction is broached to union leaders, they typically emphasize the group’s small representation within a sprawling community. “It’s pretty clear that the vast majority of members of the union believe in a thoughtful, constructive approach,” Jaeger says carefully when asked about Reform HUCTW.

But Carens would disagree. He likes to think of himself as a proletarian warrior championing the cause of the mistreated masses. Many union members, Carens says, wish their leadership would take a more aggressive stance against University administrators by leading and organizing public protests.

Jaeger’s mantra of collaboration and negotiation with University management has rendered the leader “much, much too passive” when it comes to defending worker livelihood, says Reform HUCTW member and library assistant Ed Dupree. The line dividing the interests of workers and management is impenetrable, and any concession that blurred the demarcation would signal concession—or weakness.

With a philosophy this black and white, military metaphors couldn’t be more apt. And Carens uses them enthusiastically: the administration is “basically attacking workers,” University leadership is “coming after us” in an organized “offensive,” and workers need to combine forces with their “natural allies.” In Carens’ eyes, the Harvard Corporation—a well-oiled enemy with superior weapons and hometurf advantage—is determined to hold onto its fat paycheck, duly provoking staff into action.

“We believe in adversarial relations between labor and management,” Dupree says. “We think the two sides are opposed, and we want to defend workers’ interests without reference to management’s interests.”

This belief marks a point of contrast—and a consequent breeding ground for radical discontent—between union leadership and Reform HUCTW. The executive board believes fruitful communication between management and workers is possible, that the discussion is “side-by-side at the table rather than across from the table,” Kluz says. “We share interests in what we want to accomplish—it’s just a matter of how we’re going to get there.” But in Dupree’s view, the two sides talk past each other because they speak “different ideological languages.”

“You don’t just passively sit back and hope from the force of your logical argument to convince management,” Carens says. “Negotiations aren’t achieving what they need to achieve, and now it’s time to hit the streets.”

THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE

Jaeger has a leader’s title but a collective conscience. When he walks into a room, he deflects attention and launches his body forward as though he cannot get himself to the other side of the room quickly enough. Though decidedly one of the most visible leaders of HUCTW, Jaeger vehemently refuses to describe his role without emphasizing the service of his colleagues—he is a man working on behalf of the masses.

As the director of thousands of staff workers scattered throughout the University, Jaeger is privy to a gamut of unit-centric details that a typical College administrator in University Hall may not have access to. Acting as the collective mouthpiece is Jaeger’s job. “He finds a way to capture the concerns that people have,” says Lozier, who serves on the HUCTW executive board. “He’s a big gatherer and communicator.”

Despite the union’s determination to address individual concerns, the leadership has “frustrated” some of the staffers in the past few months. When union leaders “[shouted] from the rooftops” that departments ought to cut their catering budgets, union members involved in the University’s hospitality function “took it poorly,” Jaeger says. Staffers working in the Allston development group were similarly displeased when the union publicly called for the shutting down of Allston construction.

When Jaeger comes to work, the people are often too many to please. “Somedays, it feels like walking through a minefield,” he remarks, adding that a utilitarian outlook is often needed to deal with a community as disparate as the University’s staffers.

But Jaeger isn’t quick to push out those who don’t align themselves with the philosophy of union leaders. All staff workers—and hopefully all University administrators—want to keep jobs secure wherever possible, he hopes.

“Leaders in our union want very badly to be sure that we’re a strong, clear voice representing the things our members care about and dealing as partners with the administrative leaders of the University we care about,” he says. “There may be some difference in tactic, but I think we’re very much all rowing in the same direction and hoping for the same outcomes.”

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.