Bok on Labor

The following was sent as an open letter to President Bok.

To The Editors of the Crimson:

On March 14, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). petitioned for the election that will decide whether many Harvard employees will be represented. The union has the right to an election within 30 days.

You, quite literally, wrote the book on American labor law, Cases and Materials on Labor Law with Archibald Cox and Robert Gorman.

Since it appears in your own book, you know that 70 to 75 percent of the controversies concerning the representation of employees involve no real doubt concerning the bargaining unit and that such cases are almost invariably handled informally through a consent agreement between the union and the employer. "[M]ost of the problems that arise in determining the eligibility of employees to vote are matters of details," you wrote on pages 308-309.

The HUCTW bargaining unit was established in earlier litigation; any problem that arises in determining the eligibility of individual employees should be resolved through consent. There is absolutely no valid reason for delay.

As an expert in the field, you also know that it is a disturbingly common practice for employers to seek invalid reasons for delay. As Harvard's own Professor of Law Paul Weiler has noted, in a 1983 Harvard Law Review article,

It is the time lag between the filing of a representation petition and the vote...that gives the employer the opportunity to attempt to turn its workers against the union...The delay between the filing of an election petition and the vote is itself detrimental to union organizing success...There is also evidence that employers have, with increasing effectiveness over the last 20 years, manipulated procedural levers within the representation process for the purpose of increasing delay and thereby decreasing the likelihood of union victories."

Like many employers, you apparently have a hard-headed view of representation elections, a view you expressed even as a labor law scholar. Regarding a law regulating anti-union campaigns you wrote, in a 1964 Harvard Law Review article:

It seems clear that campaign tactics cannot be condemned merely because they seem immoral or unethical. Little virtue will be gained by compelling the parties to be good, nor is there any reason to suppose that Congress intended the representation election as a drill in proper behavior for its own sake.

If the law, in your opinion. does not require a drill in proper behavior for its own sake, the Harvard community--students, facility, alumni and staff--most unequivocally does.

When most people think of an anti-union employer they probably think of a West Virginia coal operator or a Carolina textile mill. It is clear that anti-union employers are not confined to one region of the country or one set of tactics; some are more sophisticated then others.

Harvard professes to embody the best in American values and cherishes a reputation for enlightment and social responsibility. The upcoming campaign will be a test of that re putation. Please do not turn Harvard into "The School That Tried to Bust the Union." Not only is your personal reputation at stake, but, as people who in the final analysis make up Harvard, so is ours. Michael Dzialo, 3L