WORKER empowerment is the central theme of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers' (HUCTW) campaign. The campaign holds that workers at Harvard deserve a role in policy making, enabling them to decide on issues that govern their working relations and their compensation.

On May 17th, the 3700 support staff will decide whether they support the union and the message. HUCTW has addressed the concerns of workers--from benefits to child care--and gone beyond the issues of the day by representing a theme that will serve workers in the future. For that reason workers should vote to elect HUCTW as their official representative.

Many workers believe Harvard is not necessarily a bad employer, but no one doubts it is a very powerful one. Regardless of whether individual workers are dissatisfied with their pay, benefits or working relations--when individual concerns do arise they need to be addressed. While one worker against the Harvard administration stands little chance, the union is large enough to take it on.

One small voice can barely be heard in this University, much less budge its decisionmakers. Activist opposition similarly has little effect on actual policy at Harvard. The only way the workers are going to have their voices heard--and more importantly, acted upon--is to get union representation, backing by an institutional power strong enough to go head to head with the Harvard administration. A union legally acknowledged as Harvard's equal cannot be ignored.

IN its 17 years of organizing on campus, HUCTW has undergone many transformations--growing from its origins as a women's rights group at the Medical school to a group of women employees backed by the national, male-dominated United Aouto Workers union to the present group of employees sponsored by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a 1.1 million member union representing mainly government employees. HUCTW is now in an incarnation best suited to the support staff's needs.

Backed by AFSCME, the union has the resources--financial and legal--to match Harvard. AFSCME is leading the national drive to organize "pink collar" workers and is the leading union on issues of concern to these workers. Yet at Harvard, AFSCME has also shown a willingness to step back and let the workers organize and control their own fate. AFSCME has let the workers decide and that is part of the reason they should decide in its favor.

Administrators say that the workers do not need a union because Harvard is a good employer. But many workers do not agree, and the high rate of turnover--an average of 26 percent each year--is one indication that not all support staff are satisfied. Many employees say that the reason their co-workers have left, and the reason they consider leaving, is because Harvard is not the kind of workplace that will address their long-term career expectations, such as career advancement, higher salaries, better pensions, more complete health benefits and affordable child care. A union would bargain with the University to work toward the job improvements workers are asking for; if the employees feel their concerns are being addressed, they may stay at Harvard longer.

The University administration argues that a union is inappropriate at an academic setting because it would impose uniform strictures on the workplace that might disrupt research and study. But workers are as concerned about the workplace as their supervisors are, and having a union would improve its continuity. Now it is true that if workers have a strong voice on campus, they may agressively differ with the administration's standpoint, but that is not disruption, it is democracy.

The position of women in the campus governing structure is something that the administration has been slow and hesitant to address. Women compose only a small percentage of the administration and 7 percent of the faculty. But HUCTW, run mostly by women organizers, would represent a support staff composed of 80 percent women. Women's issues and women's representation on campus would have a strong and organized voice if HUCTW were to win the election. And campus child care, which costs an average support staff member half her salary, would have a forceful advocate.

AND in the end, what the workers need at Harvard, and what they have never had, is a forceful advocate. For all the arguments about whether Harvard is a good employer, it does employ thousands of people. Those people deserve to have an organized voice, and HUCTW is just that voice. Workers should strike a blow for openness at the University for all the groups who have no say in Harvard governance.