Membership Has Its Privileges

THE staff position doesn't acknowledge that there is a distinction--organizationally, philosophically and legally--between a worker and a union member. Once you recognize this difference, it becomes clear why "only certain workers" at Harvard could vote for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) transition team: only certain workers had decided to join the union.

The idea that someone who opposes the very idea of a union should choose who meets with the University to discuss ways to ensure harmony between HUCTW and Harvard is counterintuitive: the worker who opposes the union shouldn't care, and the union doesn't need advice on this matter from those who are not sympathetic to its very existence. Every club, from the Boy Scouts to the Democratic Party, has a rule for making internal decisions: each member, one vote. To stray from that rule would be organizational suicide.

Now we would share the staff position's disillusionment with the union if there was any basis for it. For example, we too would be up in arms if the union didn't spend all of its resources trying to sign up new members, or if it didn't send surveys for contract negotiating to even those who still oppose the idea of a union. The fact is that the union is signing up members routinely, and the great thing about unions and democracy is that each member conceives of the union uniquely. Members could oppose the current leadership, or the current leadership's goals, as long as they agreed to work through the union's basic procedures.

So, at least half of the union's decision makes absolute sense. But there still is one lingering question: Why limit eligiblity for the transition team vote to those members who signed union cards before the May 17 election? The union says it did so because there has not been an organizing drive--with cards distributed to workers--since then. Yet, some have signed cards since then.

If only for the dissension it has caused, it may have been a mistake to implement the May cut-off. But it bears repeating that the union makes its own rules. There is no reason for the staff position to find, in what appears to be little more than a scheduling error, evidence for unfounded fears that all power corrupts.