HUCTW Praised First Contract

When the Harvard Union for Clerical and Technical Workers won recognition in 1988 after 17 years of efforts, many were uncertain about what relationship the University would have with the new union.

The administration of then-University President Derek C. Bok had previously filed legal complaints questioning whether the original election by workers for the union was free and fair—something the National Labor Relations Board requires of such a process. When Harvard’s petitions were initially deemed invalid, Bok had an important decision to make—appeal the result to the NLRB or begin negotiating with the organizers.

Although Bok, who had previously taught labor law for over a decade, still contends there was a “technical case” to be made for pursuing an appeal, he decided against it after consultating a close friend and colleague. While the newly unionized crowd, largely composed of women, applauded what would appear to be their victory, uncertainty grew about how the union and its 3,600 constituents would be able to negotiate with the University.

Just one year later, HUCTW and the University would agree on a three-year contract that would be widely seen as mutually beneficial, with added benefits in terms of education, salary, and pension programs, among many other things.

During the negotiations, a powerful collection of experienced labor professors and intermediaries were able to form bonds with union leaders that many say successors have been unable to fully replicate. University representatives used creative means of negotiation and an “unusual” labor leader helped notch significant victories for Harvard workers.

Twenty-five years later, the nearly 4,800 members of HUCTW are still a force in University policy. Though recent years have seen the organization struggle to negotiate with the University, students, union workers, and faculty reminisced positively on their 1989 contract in what many deem to be one of the high points in HUCTW’s history.

CALM AFTER THE STORM

By 1988, the University had been contesting HUCTW’s formation for years, and workers believed the administration had conveyed an obvious sentiment against the union.

“Clearly [the University] didn’t want it,” said Maura Kilcommons, who has been part of the union since its inception. “They were trying to talk people out of it, but they weren’t breaking our thumbs or anything.”

After the NLRB affirmed the legitimacy of the union’s election, the University switched gears to work with

HUCTW rather than against it. Bok said over two decades later that he straightaway switched his focus towards forming a close bond with the union.

“We really, in other words, changed our policy... We were no longer contesting the union, but trying to develop as constructive a relationship as possible,” Bok explained.

HUCTW members, energized from their official formation and eager to begin negotiations, welcomed the University’s change of heart.

“For the University, I think there was also a little bit of a feeling, certainly not on the surface but kind of lurking in the background, of wanting to make amends for the fact that there had been some pretty aggressive and hostile anti-union campaigning,” said current HUCTW director Bill Jaeger.

Bok quickly appointed his close friend and colleague John T. Dunlop, a former United States secretary of labor and former chair of the Economics Department, as the University’s chief negotiator.

With that, Harvard and its new union set to work preparing its first contract.

A UNIQUE APPROACH

Looking back, many involved in the first negotiations said it marked a new way that workers and employers bargained and embodied an even more significant philosophical shift in regards to the role of unions.

For one, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences professor Frederick H. Abernathy, a friend of Dunlop, described the “enormous diversity” of professions and differing priorities of unionized workers—with older workers focused more on retirement benefits and younger workers chiefly concerned with education and forming a long-term career—that made the task of negotiating initially difficult.

To deal with the wide variety of issues to be discussed, Dunlop created eight subcommittees and tasked each with addressing a specific topic of the intended contract, hoping to pinpoint workers’ differing concerns and ultimately resolve each of them in a specialized contract.

“All of this somehow or another led the late John Dunlap to decide we would have a contract unlike any other union contract,” Abernathy said.

Many HUCTW workers and student supporters attributed their close relationship with the University in their first negotiations to the philosophy set forth by Kris Rondeau, then-director of HUCTW.

“There was something very inspiring about watching that bottom-up organizing,” student advocate of HUCTW Noah M. Berger ’89 said. “It wasn’t about being critical of the employer, it was about the basic principle that work is important in people’s lives, what they do at work is important, and people have a voice in shaping their work lives.”

Rondeau was an “unusual union leader,” Bok said. “She made clear to me her objective was not to fight with the University, but try to achieve changes that would not only strengthen or benefit her members, but also make the University a stronger and better place.”

In the end, the contract took less than a year to finalize. The final product took the benefits package from “fairly good” to “world class,” Jaeger said.

While the union and administrators had seemed to have formed strong and constructive relationships, the “amazingly positive” results of the first negotiation were still surprising and unexpected, Jaeger said.

Though Bok said he did not receive much pushback from faculty or administrators, except for a confrontation in which he was accosted on the subway for his negotiations with the union, others said some felt felt uneasy about the finalized contract.

“Some lower-level administrators thought that John Dunlap had given them too much in the way of wages,” Abernathy said.

A CHANGING DYNAMIC

When the three-year contract expired in 1992, the University climate had changed. Some of the key players in 1989 negotiations had left—Bok stepped down, Dunlap retired, and Rondeau left to work for the New England Organizing Project, an umbrella organization for several Boston-area unions including HUCTW. Without the strong leadership of the first negotiation present, HUCTW and the University struggled to sustain the strong relationship they had previously created.

“When it came time to renegotiate the contract in 1992, it was an entirely different atmosphere than it had [been] the first time around,” said John Hoerr, a former labor reporter for Business Week and author of “We Can’t Eat Prestige,” which details the rise of HUCTW.

“There were people in the environment who thought the economic gains of the first negotiation were excessive and needed to be clawed back,” Jaeger said. “We had a very hard time in 1992 mostly just about economic issues, mostly just about where we were going to stabilize the raise program.”

After 1992, the relationship between the University and HUCTW gradually stabilized and negotiations remained cooperative for around a decade. But when the 2008 recession hit, pressures on the University to cut spending caused a return of tense negotiations as HUCTW tried to prevent job losses.

During the hardest economic years, HUCTW agreed to take pay raise decreases in accordance with spending cuts across the University. But when their contract expired in 2012, HUCTW experienced its “worst-ever” negotiations with the University, according to Jaeger. As the economy recovered, HUCTW believed its members should be getting larger pay raises and more healthcare benefits, but the University claimed it was still hurting from the recession.

“[The recession] produced a kind of stress and frustration in the workplace, which has still really not gone away,” Jaeger added. “Those jobs haven’t really come back.”

Despite economic recovery over the past several years, HUCTW workers have noticed a change in University tone.

“It seems to me the Harvard administration in the last maybe 10 years just has sort of become increasingly corporatized or something,” said Donna Dickerson, a publications coordinator and HUCTW member since its founding. “There’s been a change in their willingness to engage in sort of bilateral discussions. There’s been a sort of hardening over the last few years.”

Jaeger voiced concern that HUCTW has not been getting its desired negotiation agreements because the University is under pressure to speed up growth in other areas such as online education, building in Allston, and the House Renewal Project. However, he suggested that the University doesn’t need to sacrifice worker interests in order to achieve its other goals.

“Our big slogan back in ’89 was ‘it’s not anti-Harvard to be pro-union.’ In the modern era, in 2014, we would say ‘it’s not anti-growth to be pro-taking care of the people in the core,’” Jaeger said.

While they say they have faced recent setbacks, many HUCTW members claim that the mission of the union and its approach to negotiations has remained constant over the last 25 year. Kilcommons, a faculty assistant at the Medical School, expressed optimism about the sustaining role of HUCTW.

“I think that might be the change—it’s no longer a struggling upstart—it has a very defined role, it has a defined culture, people know who we are, that sort of thing,” Kilcommons said.

—Staff writer Noah J. Delwiche can be reached at noah.delwiche@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ndelwiche.

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.