Helping Workers Get Organized

One spring day last year, when many Harvard students demonstrated against the Corporation's decision on South African investments, one Harvard student had to shuttle between the rally and another, very different struggle. On that day, the members of Local 880 of the Massachusetts Hospital Service Workers went out on strike against Otis Hospital in Cambridge. Taking turns on the picket line and at the South Africa rally was one Harvard student who had worked with the union throughout the year, Adair Damman '79.

Damman is one of a handful of Harvard students who work with community organizations like Local 880 as part of a program sponsored by Phillips Brooks House's Committee for Economic Change (CEC).

Committee members work for a variety of community and labor organizations in the Boston area, in an effort to learn how these groups work to lessen economic inequalities. In addition to Local 880, the CEC offers its members placement in Mass Fair Share, Cambridge Tenants Organization and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers. The committee has about 20 to 25 members, who attend weekly dinner meetings devoted to formulating theories of change drawn from these personal experiences, Damman says.

Local 880 has mounted several organizing drives in the past few years at Harvard teaching hospitals and other hospitals in Massachusetts. It is an unusual union, Damman says, because it strives for democracy within its own organization, and because it concerns itself with social issues that fall outside the traditional concerns of a union. In addition, he said, Local 880 is considerably less politically conservative than other, more established unions.

Local 880 obtained a charter from the Service Employees International Union on the condition the international branch forego its traditional right to veto a strike vote of the local, Stephanie Van Dyke '79, another member of the CEC, says. The union also stands out in its concern for the rights of patients to good and compassionate health care, as well as the rights of hospital workers, Damman says.

Damman has participated in both field work and office work. She took part in contract negotiations, picketing, strike support work and background research on contracts, as well as door-to-door organizing. Throughout these experiences, the union has consistently maintained its commitments to health care and to its members.

Hospital workers, especially the nurses' aides, maintenance and kitchen workers who make up a large percentage of the union membership, must work long and unpredictable hours, often during the graveyard shift between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. The union argues that in order to maintain an acceptably high standard of patient care, the workers must not suffer from overwork or excessive assignments to graveyard shift hours. If they do receive overtime assignments, they should be amply compensated, the union contends.

The union demonstrated its dual concern for patients and workers in the case of St. John of God, a convalescent hospital in Brighton that houses chronic care patients. The hospital was scheduled to be closed for a lack of funds, but doctors estimated that 30 per cent of the patients might die if they were moved. The union took up the case, lobbied against the closing -- and the hospital stayed open. Damman remembers how important the issue was to those involved, and how it felt to help them. "People were furious at the idea their relatives would have to be moved and maybe die, and that created solidarity between the families and the union -- that was really exciting."

Damman also remembers one round of contract negotiations when she witnessed a heated argument between Gerald Shea, one of the local's original organizers, and the lawyer for a hospital. In every contract, Shea tries to insert a preamble stating that the goal is to maintain "the highest standards of patient care delivery in meeting the needs of the community." He also argues for insertion of an equal opportunity clause, which adds to the traditional prohibitions of discrimination on the grounds of race, sex and religious belief, the categories of political belief, sexual preference or marital status. "The lawyer kept insisting the clauses were inappropriate for a contract" Damman says -- but Shea kept insisting on it.

After a long and fruitless argument, Shea called a recess and conferred with other union members, telling them that if he insisted on the clauses, the hospital might insist on cutting down on some of the bread-and-butter concessions they made. But union members urged him to go ahead and press for the clauses, because they believed in them, Damman recalls, adding, "I was really moved to see people who get paid so little willing to sacrifice for an idea."

Though the CEC has often worked with Local 880, committee members also work with other community organizations, some Harvard-related and some not. Van Dyke says one of the most important placement areas remains Mass Fair Share, a Boston-based organization which, among other activities, has pushed the University to increase the payments it makes to Cambridge and Boston for its tax-exempt land holdings.

Harvard students have conducted research for Fair Share in the past, but lately they have helped to organize field work as well, and CEC members say they like that better. "If you research, you learn about utility rates, landholding and tax rates -- but if you organize you see the people in the community, and that's important," Damman says.

Stephanie Van Dyke has worked for several organizations not directly concerned with Harvard, such as Somerville United Neighborhoods, and 9 to 5, an organization of women office workers who campaign against age and sex discrimination. But even when involved with tenants' organizations, students come into contact with Harvard in its role as landowner and landlord, Van Dyke says.

Viewing Harvard in roles other than its educational ones is one of the most important experiences members of the committee absorb, Van Dyke and Damman agree. The students work for organizations that frequently come into conflict with Harvard, and force them to see "how an institution like Harvard affects the people in the surrounding community," Van Dyke says. "They recognize that Harvard is a landlord, employer and a stockholder," she adds.

Van Dyke says she views one of the functions of the committee as educating its members about the University in all its aspects. "People don't want to think of Harvard as evil, but it is a corporation, and you have to think about its corporate responsibilities," Damman adds.

Madeleine Lourie, a staff worker for Local 880, agrees with the students' view. "It's been important and good for the union to have students working, but it is just as good for the student -- it's a real education for them. They leave the union with a sense of union work and how important it is," she says.

It is this direct contact with the community that Van Dyke and Damman believe is the most valuable part of their community organizing work. "Seeing how people live, what they are willing to fight about, to take risks for -- it's extraordinarily moving," Damman says.

One of the most important results of her work at Local 880, Damman says, was "talking and getting to know people who are completely different from the people I know here." "We've seen a change in people on the committee," Van Dyke says. One of their committee members is a physicist who, after some time working on the committee, came to her and said, "This is the kind of thing I never come into contact with, and I needed to."

Van Dyke and Damman defend their committee against skeptics who might point out that there are relatively few Harvard students on the CEC, most of whom do not plan to devote their lives to community organizing. How sincere, then, are the CEC members? What effect do they ultimately have upon the social and economic injustices they are investigating?

Van Dyke has an answer. "It would be unrealistic to assume we can change everything," she says. "But we do good. We're the drop in the bucket, but what we do is important."