Social Theory on the Streets

LISA BARNES has a problem. "I think college is important, but every time I set our for class, I remember some picket line or some union meeting that I have to attend," she said.

And so, while enrolled as a student at MIT for two years and Radcliffe this past Fall, Lisa has organized fishermen in Nova Scotia, hospital workers in Boston, clerical workers in Brighton and has spent a total of three weeks in class.

For the Radcliffe woman who has second thoughts about the academic life, Lisa's career suggests a way out--a way out of the classroom and onto the streets were at least admission to a union meeting is sex-blind.

At 23 years old, Lisa can hardly qualify as a hard-nosed union organizer. But in five years she's achieved stitches, broken bones, fond farewell letters from schools and numerous employers and five years of organizing wisdom.

Lisa is currently working for Hospital Workers Union 1199, a predominantly female union of nurses aides, maintenance men and non-professional hospital workers. Some of the Spanish workers dislike the idea of a women taking a leadership position in the union. But Lisa, hardly 5 ft. 3 in., said this results in little more than a brief and initial awkwardness between her and some of the workers.

In fact, her size and sex has helped her gain the edge on smug employers and administrators. When I first saw Lisa in action, she was explaining to the Harvard dean of Freshmen, F. Skiddy von Stade, '37,--twice her size--why a group of striking hospital workers had disrupted a class at the Graduate School of Design. The Dean was no match for Lisa's calm and intelligent reasoning. "I have no qualms about disrupting your University's classes, it is clear to me that the dispute at the hospital is as important to the education of your students as their daily homework assignments," she said.

Lisa spent more time interrupting than attending classes at Harvard last Fall. On three consecutive Fridays in November, workers from 1199 had entered the class of Mortimer B. Zuckerman, an instructor at the GSD and a part-owner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. The workers, currently involved in a strike at Mass Rehab, demanded that Zuckerman explain his role in the wage dispute. After ignoring several warnings from the administration, the workers were invited to a tete-a-tete with the dean.

Two weeks after Lisa's meeting with the dean, the workers were summoned to appear in court on charges of trespassing and disturbing an assembled body. Lisa had not been identified. Nobody knew at the time that she was currently enrolled at Radcliffe. A settlement was worked out between Harvard and the workers which prohibited the workers from disrupting the class in the future. The workers begrudgingly accepted the settlement. "When you don't have power, you have to make compromises," Lisa said.

Neither demonstrations nor classes bring Lisa to Harvard any more. Her time is pretty much filled by the strike at Mass Rehab and the union's organizing drive in Boston hospitals--no simple task.

AS A "SUBVERSIVE," Lisa has quite a record. Back at public high school in Croton-Harmon, a small town outside of New York, Lisa's guidance counselor did her a favor of informing the colleges Lisa had applied to of her radical activities in and out of school. Activities like organizing school cafeteria fasts to raise money for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and antiwar agitation. Lots of students were agitators in their local high schools but few stepped beyond the bounds of practical wisdom and got themselves thrown out of high school. Agitating against the war in 1966 was not treated as lightly as agitations four years later when protest became more widespread.

Lisa's mother, a bit more pragmatic, suggested she apply to MIT which was hungry for women at the time. Lisa tried and was accepted. She lasted for two weeks.

The first day of school Lisa searched for the Boston Draft Resistance group instead of course books. She spent her school days working for the resistance group and a publishing company in Brighton--beginning the first in a long series of union fights.

When Lisa, on full scholarship, applied for the job with the company, she had only the single-minded intention of earning some money. She was hired as an editorial assistant, i.e. a switchboard operator and typist.

The 15 women who worked with her each had different lunch shifts and were separated by divisions between their desks. They rarely spoke to each other, that is, until Lisa and several other secretaries noticed that what management was presenting to them as an incentive plan was really a work speedup. The senior editor of the company called the women together and explained to them the new plan he had in mind. According to the outline, the women would receive pay increases if the total cost per page went down and pay decreases if the cost per page went up. Good incentive to speed up the secretarial pool. The only catch was that the cost per page was dependent on the speed of the editors and the authors of the articles. Thus the secretaries' salary would depend on the work rate of the editors and hardly be influenced by their own speed.

The 15 secretaries shocked management and turned the proposal down. Lisa, who said she did not feel she played any special role in encouraging the secretaries to nix the proposal, was out of her job within the week.

"I REALLY WASN'T an instigator. When we all got together to talk, something we had not previously done, we became collectively aware of just what our role in the process would be. It was exciting to see this awareness click through office discussion."

Lisa moved on to her next job: clerical work at MIT's notorious I-labs, home of MIRU and other military research projects. Old friends at MIT knew of Lisa's radical activities and so Naval intelligence and FBI men at the I-labs were especially concerned about her. While working at the I-labs. Lisa took part in the 1969 November Action, an antiwar demonstration at MIT. She received a slashed eye, cracked spine and all the other radical medals of honor for her activities. After the November Action, Lisa was carefully "watched". "It was like a siege or an armed camp," Lisa said.

During this time, Lisa and two other antiwar activists had been speaking at local high schools about the war. One morning a high school in Tewksbury, the group was met by a host of policemen. Despite the protests of the 250-member student body, Lisa and her companions were told to leave. They refused, got roughed up and were carted off to jail. The group was referred to in the papers as the "Tewksbury Trio" at a time when similar number combinations were making headlines elsewhere.

It was time for a vacation and Lisa was given a week's leave from the I-labs. This is Lisa's idea of a vacation. A couple of her friends had decided to go to Nova Scotia where a strike of fisherman and cannery workers was beginning. The fishermen had had an orientation meeting and decided to set up a picket line. The next day, Lisa, three women, and a dog manned the picket line. Within an hour word spread like lightning through the town and women and children left their homes and joined the line. So did the Canadian Mounties. End of strike.

Lisa came back to Cambridge and severed ties officially with MIT and the I-labs. "They weren't particularly sad to see me go. I was the enemy in their midst," she said.

SOME OF THE professors Lisa had known in the I-labs had one more project they wanted to help her with: G.L.I. or Get Lisa In. In to Radcliffe that is. They had been pushing Lisa to return to college for some time and they thought Radcliffe could cope with a Lisa.

As it turned out, Radcliffe coped fine with Lisa but she was still not too hot on college.

While Lisa spent hardly a week at class, she did manage to help organize Harvard Clerical Workers. Lisa did not take any of her finals during the Fall and didn't bother to register in the Spring. Lisa had nothing particular against Radcliffe. She just "happened" to get involved with the efforts at 1199 and devoted 24 hours a day to that.

There are two major problems in organizing the unorganized, according to Lisa. First, the workers are constantly aware of the disfavor with which their supervisors view their union activities. While they might want to support the union's activities, they know it will not place them in the good graces of those who control their wages.

In addition, some of the workers, particularly the women, do not take their jobs that seriously since they are only a secondary source of income. Some of the secretaries who work for the top-level administrators in the hospitals identify with their status and therefore scorn the union.

ALTHOUGH LISA hardly borrows the social theorists vocabulary to describe job conditions, she said that what she had learned about social stratification during her brief stay at college applied perfectly to conditions in the hospitals. Management uses race, class, and hierarchy to divide workers, Lisa explained. "Class and departmental separation encourages an in-grown community and suspicions between workers in different classes," she said. And Lisa does not think this is a natural divisiveness that the workers choose for comfort. She said that many of the Spanish workers want to work with English-speaking workers so that they can learn the language.

In the New England Baptist Hospital, the workers sit at different tables according to their jobs. Lisa said that supervisors often questioned workers who switched tables. The different color uniforms workers wear help the supervisor keep an eye on who's mixing with whom.

A second obstacle is the confusion caused by the competing dual unions. When the Boston Hospital Workers Organizing Committee entered 1199 territory in October 1972, a jurisdictional fight began. The Boston organizers were trying to affiliate workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Barnes and other 1199 staff members had to explain to the workers the threat SEIU posed to their union's efforts.

Some people consider working with unions a sell-out since it implies an acceptance of the wage system and is incompatible with workers control and reform movements. Lisa disagrees. "To work for revolutionary socialism is to bypass too many steps and to leave people with too many doubts," Lisa said. "A lot of people have ideals but have few ideas of how to get there."

Lisa considers herself a Marxist--"but I'm not quite sure what brand." In addition, she does not consider revolutionary ideals incompatible with the labor movement. "People like George Meany really don't represent most workers or most trade union officials."

UNIONIZING SERVICE employees offers opportunities other unionizing efforts don't. Lisa attributes this to the close community of interests that the hospital aides share with the patients. This is true especially at Boston City Hospital where most of the workers come from the community, Lisa explained. Because service employees can't increase their productivity and they feel the inflation squeeze the tightest, they are potentially more radical than commodity producers.

Some organizers capitalize on this. Lisa told of her disconcerting involvement with two workers from the Progressive Labor party. The workers interrupted a union meeting and requested that the organizer, Lisa, hand the leadership of the meeting over to the workers. Lisa agreed. Within an hour the workers from PL were spouting party doctrine and had taken complete control of the meeting, which angered many of the other workers.

Lisa is receptive to criticism and has no hard feelings against the PL faction. "The hospital workers are hostile to the PL people--not because they disagree with their goals, but the way they come across turns many workers off," she explained.

The strike at Mass Rehab is still in its crucial stage and Lisa doubts she will return to college in the near future. It is the specifics of organizing that frustrate Lisa and not the choices she has to make about her own future. The more immediate exigencies of external situations seem to grip her and therefore decisions about her education keeps getting postponed.

"After all, social theory is real important, and I firmly believe in mixing theory and practice, but, well, right now it just doesn't seem to fit into my plans. There's always something else I have to do."