Harvard Was Prepared

Three pages of a memorandum from Ropes and Gray, the University's law firm, to an unidentified officer of Harvard, show that the University was so concerned about the possibility of labor organizing that it restructured its Medical Area personnel office in 1972 to improve its case against a union limited to any single area of the University.

The partial memorandum refers to earlier correspondence between the law firm and the University, in which Ropes and Gray suggested Harvard eliminate a separate Medical Area personnel office, and bring all personnel activities under a centralized structure in Cambridge.

The three-page segment is dated November 1974, but the references go back to 1971. Harvard changed its personnel structure in 1972, bringing the Medical Area office under John B. Butler's main office in Cambridge.

During Thursday's National Labor Relations Board hearing on the very question discussed in the memorandum--whether the Medical Area by itself is an appropriate bargaining unit under the National Labor Relations Act--the Medical Area Employees Organizing Committee's lawyer tried to introduce the document as evidence.

At that time Richard Levy, the lawyer, didn't really know exactly what the three pages were. He quickly found out as Harvard's Ropes and Gray lawyers at the hearing identified the memo and said it was part of a correspondence between lawyer and client, and therefore confidential.

Eventually the NLRB hearing officer ruled that it not be admitted, Harvard's motivation for making the changes not being relevant to a non-adversary proceeding.

Harvard general counsel Daniel Steiner '54 said Thursday the University had never tried to disguise its desire that unions in the University be University-wide, and said the changes in the personnel office were made "in part" to improve Harvard's case in the event of hearings such as the one now taking place at the NLRB.