What Harvard Wants Workers to Know

The briefing book distributed by the administration describes Harvard's practices as an employer and focuses on the following points:

."Harvard is a good employer." The book says that compensation and benefit programs for support staff are based on local market conditions and employee needs.

.The book contends that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). the parent union of the local organizing drive, was created to represent government employees and is inexperienced in representing staff in the private sector.

.The book says that the process of collective bargaining between a union and the University could risk employees' current pay scale--giving support staff salaries and benefits which are more than, equal to, or less than what they currently receive. The book also maintains that the wage increases AFSCME has negotiated at other universities are less than the increases Harvard support staff receive now, without a union.

.The book enumerates what is legal and illegal for supervisors to say to their employees about the union drive. While supervisors are prohibited from asking their employees. "Was that a union organizer you were speaking with?" the book contends they can say "I am troubled by the tactics of certain union organizers. In some cases they seem to me to be pressuring and harassing support staff."

Leaders of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) say that any criticism of the union drive by supervisors can be intimidating to employees, who may fear repercussions in the workplace if they act against their bosses' expressed viewpoint.

Union organizers also criticize sections of the book that lists strikes at universities, tell stories of arduous grievance procedures. and describe contract provisions that AFSCME has settled at other universities, but that would not appeal to Harvard employees.

"This seems like such blatant anti-union propaganda," says one supervisor who claimed that the data in the book presented only the worst union contracts and statistics. "It is full of half truths."

Union organizers say that several support staff members had called them with questions and complaints about the book.

"The material in this book directly contradicts other things which I have heard, and not only things the union told me," says one support staff member. "If it is true, it isn't the whole truth."

The union does not argue with the specific data in the book. Rather, organizers decry the spirit of the book, which they say is full of "misrepresentations, distortions and half truths."

"There isn't any one part in particular that is so erroneous it really stands out, but all of the book is partial information," says Marie Manna, a union organizer.

Manna says that the union's main complaint is that the book leaves things out of context. "It does things like talk about universities which have had strikes, without ever mentioning how many have not had strikes," she says.

"They pick and choose parts of other people's contracts that people here wouldn't like, but they don't mention why the other schools might have wanted those contracts," Manna says.

The book also emphasizes AFSCME's role as a third party that would butt into union talks at Harvard and support its own agenda rather than the best interests of Harvard support staff.

But HUCTW asserts that the union is a grassroots effort that is not run by the national parent. "The union is us, the employees who sign the membership cards," says a union pamphlet.