For much of the last year, the leaders of Harvard's largest union and University administrators waged a fierce battle across Massachusetts Avenue.

The heads of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), located in Harvard Square, and then-Provost Jerry R. Green, from his Memorial Hall office traded insults and accusations as the administration refused to allow union representatives to sit on a task force reviewing the University's benefits.

The task force, first chaired by Green and then by Vice President for Administration Sally H. Zeckhauser, consisted of 10 highly-placed administrators. With the help of consulting firm Towers Perrin, the committee spent nearly a year evaluating the University's benefits structure, periodically updating the University's top brass.

In a report released earlier this month, nearly six months late, the task force recommended a series of changes to the faculty and staff fringe benefits program, which includes health insurance and pension.

In the end, the union's members are not going to be affected by the changes. Union leaders are vowing to protect their interests in negotiations this spring.

Today, this battle has an additional front, since the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) joined the fray. Members of the FAS, who assumed they would be able to vote on the changes and sat quietly by during the review process, are now concerned about decreases in future income. They say that they, too, were excluded from the process.

At yesterday's full faculty meeting, irate professors spent an hour and a half describing the harmful effects of pension deduction and imploring the administration to reconsider the changes.

At times Rudenstine appeared tired and upset by the faculty attacks.

The upshot is that the benefits adjustment seems to have split the University into two camps: the administration which formulated and approved the changes, and the people who have to live with them.

And the rift seems to be widening.

Timeline

In the spring of 1993, rising health care costs and improved portfolio performance prompted the central administration to launch a review of the University's 20-year-old benefits program.

At that time, President Neil L. Rudenstine, Green and the deans requested a review to address a $10 million structural deficit in the employee fringe benefit pool.

The benefits pool is an internal University bank account. Deposits are made as a part of faculty and staff salaries.

Health and pension benefits are then paid out of this fund. Although a constant flow of funds is being deposited, the amount spent fluctuates annually, depending on the demographic mix of University employees, the cost of health care and the status of the economy.

"You can't tell what benefits are going to cost," a source close to the task force says. "This bank account was running short consistently."