Secretaries May Be Next in Line

Peter Van Delft works on the sixth floor of a large dark stone building on Astor Place on New York's lower east side. These are the offices of District 65, a union arm of the Distributive Workers of America, and Van Delft is a general organizer, university division.

Earlier this week, Van Delft was not in, but another organizer speculated that he might be in Chicago, trying to unionize workers at Northwestern or Chicago University.

Two weeks before that, Van Delft was in Boston, at a meeting of clerical and technical workers in the Medical School area.

The Harvard Medical Area organizing committee has affiliated with Van Delft's union, and with his assistance it will petition the National Labor Relations Board, probably sometime late this month, to attempt to obtain union certification.

On the College side of the Charles, Van Delft has conferred with what one source characterized as "little pockets" of clerical and technical workers, also with the idea of unionizing.

According to John B. Butler, director of Personnel, none of the University's 4000 clerical and technical workers is in any union, while 1700 of its trade workers are.

Organizers say the sudden urge to unionize among the largely female clerical and technical workers is less a reaction to the spring's printers strike than an expression of the women's movement. They say that the women's movement has given the workers a sense of self-esteem that would not tolerate the allegedly low wages they get.

In the last major wage hike of July 1, 1973, the average real gain in earnings for these technical and clerical workers was less than 1 per cent. And organizers claim that promotion prospects for workers and health benefits are painfully inadequate.

So every morning before work at the Med School, the School of Public Health and the Dental School, a handful of secretaries/organizers leaflet their co-workers and distribute petitions.

Butler has indicated that University opposition to the unionization of Medical Area workers would be that the staff of 1200 there is not the appropriate bargaining unit, and that any District 65 local must include Harvard employees in Cambridge too.

Organizers at the Med School said Tuesday that they expect Harvard to contest their bid for unionization, but they say they do not want to organize with the nascent Cambridge effort.

Van Delft, from his office at the District 65, says he also anticipates Harvard's opposition, and adds that he might insist that the Medical Area clerical and technical workers try for a University-wide local.

In the end, though, the general organizer predicts success. "There's a real commitment to unionization at Harvard," he says.