Harvard's Buildings and Grounds craftsmen may have started a trend last night by voting to dissolve their small independent union and join a group of AFL-CIO unions.

The 280 carpenters, masons, plumbers, painters, electricians, and groundsmen who made up the Buildings and Grounds Maintenance Association have decided to become members of the five AFL-CIO craft unions which compose the Boston Crafts Maintenance Council.

Other Unions Restless

The need for professionally trained business agents, which BGMA officers say was behind last night's decision, has been felt by members of some of the other independent unions at Harvard. Some observers predict that Harvard Printing Office employees, now represented by the Harvard University Employees Representative Association, will seek to break away and affiliate themselves with an AFL-CIO union.

And some of Harvard's janitors and maids, who are also represented by the HUERA, have expressed an interest in becoming members of an AFL-CIO union.

These people point out that Harvard has been negotiating for new contracts with its labor unions since last July, and that, with one exception, only those unions with professional bargaining agents (AFL-CIO affiliates) have reached settlements.

Independent unions, because they lack financial resources, are usually forced to use their own members as bargaining agents.

The craftsmen at B & G will now join a union made up of men solely in their own trade, but the business agents of the five BCMC unions will bargain as one rather than as five committees with Harvard. Don Berry, secretary of the Boston Crafts Maintenance Council, which will be the bargaining committee, said the BCMC would not be willing to sign an agreement with the University for any one of the craft units until all of them had "received favorable settlements."

BCMC officials expect the University to recognize them within a few days as the official bargaining agent for all employees once covered by the BGMA.