Edward W. Powers, state director of civil service, will become Harvard's director of employee relations this summer.

He replaces William N. Mullins, who announced his resignation as manager of employee relations earlier this spring and called for a reexamination and reorganization of his office.

Powers will report to Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, while Mullins was under the general supervision of Stephen S.J. Hall, vice president for administration.

Powers will have the same area of responsibility as Mullins--primarily dealing with labor unions that have contracts with Harvard--but his title indicates a higher rank and pay scale than Mullins had.

'Best Candidate'

Steiner said last week that Powers seemed "by far the best candidate for the job."

From 1968 to 1973 Powers worked in the Harvard Personnel Office, first as labor relations manager and then as associate director of personnel. His term in the state civil service job expires July 1.

He said yesterday he took the Harvard job because "I've been job-hunting for six months and I liked working at Harvard."

Steiner cited "the increasing legal problems of labor relations" as the reason for shifting labor relations to his jurisdiction. Powers was a practicing lawyer in New York in the early sixties.

Powers's office will remain in the Personnel Office in Holyoke Center. Steiner said, and "he will inevitably have a close relationship with Personnel."

Besides contract negotiating. Powers said, part of his job will be to "improve communications with employees."

"When I was at Harvard before I talked to groups of employees about whether they would be better off with a union or without. That can be debated," Powers said, "If the employer can deal with problems meaningfully, some employees would rather deal directly than through an intermediary, particularly in an academic setting."

"Harvard is not anti-union," he added, "but we wouldn't want employees to choose unions because Harvard failed them."

About 4000 non-union clerical and technical employees now work for Harvard, and two separate groups--one at the Medical School and one in Cambridge--are trying to persuade them to unionize