When President Neil L. Rudenstine returned from a trip to Europe this summer, members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers were so glad to see him that they met him at the airport with flowers.

Though there may have been more than a touch of sarcasm in the gesture, Union members said they honestly hoped Rudenstine would speed up stalled negotiations.

The 3600-member Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers saw its contract expire June 30. Negotiations over a new contract have gone slowly, caught up in disagreements over the size of a pay increase for union members and benefits for domestic partners.

Rudenstine, the union believed, with his friendly reputation and working-class roots, would intervene on behalf of the union in its tough contract negotiations with Harvard management. Union members sent postcards directly to the president; in a sense, many pinned their hopes on him.

But the union's hopes may well have been unrealistic. A look at Rudenstine's record of dealing with unions at Princeton University, where he was provost from 1977 to 1988, shows he handled labor relations there in almost exactly the same way he is handling them here--from a distance.

Rudenstine never negotiated directly with the Princeton unions which represent substantially fewer employees than Harvard's unions do.

"At Princeton, there's just layer after layer of administration," said Mary Q. Wieland, a former president of the union that represents Princeton library workers. "You don't really have any contact with the higher levels."

Wetland said that because at Princeton union negotiators deal mostly with lower-level administrators, it was difficult to gauge the posture of top officials like Rudenstine.

But the situation at Princeton caused some union leaders to believe it was likely that Rudenstine had a role in denying worker demands.

"The provost chairs the priorities committee, so he pretty much has a say," said Dan P. Gallagher, the current president of the Princeton library workers' union.

"In general, the Princeton administration has been very pro-active against the unions," Gallagher said.

And Gallagher said it was unlikely that Rudenstine's attitudes changed when he arrived in Cambridge. "I'm sure he's doing the same thing there [at Harvard]," he said.

Rudenstine himself acknowledged somesimilarities in an interview Tuesday. "The rolewas very similar," Rudenstine said. "There was apersonnel office. I and others consulted regularlywith the negotiating team."

The president said the structure allows thenegotiations to remain in the hands of those whoare properly trained in such matters.

The person who directed labor relations atPrinceton during the Rudenstine era could not bereached for comment