As courses go untaught and meals remain unserved at Yale University due to a campus-wide strike of thousands of employees, business continues as usual at Harvard.

But for Yale, where eight of its last eleven contract negotiations have now resulted in a strike, the sight of picketers on campus is almost business as usual.

And while Yale’s graduate students join janitors, dining hall and hospital workers as part of their own bid to unionize, Harvard teaching fellows gear up to grade the first wave of midterms.

The contrast on both counts is a telling one.

Students did storm Mass. Hall demanding a living wage two years ago, and uncertainty does surround the course of future contract talks.

But, according to union representatives at both schools, Yale’s labor problems far surpass Harvard’s—a fact they attribute not to Harvard’s great generosity, but to a difference in culture and circumstance.

A Tale of Two Universities

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW)—the equivalent of the striking Local 34 union at Yale—has had a rocky relationship with the University at times, but has never organized a strike.

HUCTW director Bill Jaeger said it is no accident that Harvard’s “situation is a lot stronger” than Yale’s in terms of salary and benefits.

“The character and course of union-management relations has been very different,” he said. “There’s a very strong commitment in our organization to trying as hard as we can to work with Harvard administrators.”

Yale workers are pushing for raises that would narrow—or at least prevent from widening—a gap they say exists between Yale and Harvard wages.

Jaeger estimated the average HUCTW member saw a 6.5 percent salary increase during the first year of the current contract—which runs from June 2001 to June 2004—a 5.5 percent increase this year, and will see a 5 percent increase next year.

According to Yale unions spokesperson Bill Meyerson, Local 34 and Local 35—which represents Yale’s service and maintenance workers—are asking for one-year retroactive raises of 4 and 3 percent and increases of 8.5 percent and 5.5 percent over the next three years, respectively.

Meyerson said senior administrative assistants at Harvard—represented by HUCTW—earn as much as 57 percent more than their Yale counterparts.

Although HUCTW battled with Harvard for recognition in 1988 and picketed in 1992 and 1996, Jaeger said good relationships with Harvard negotiators have grown out of past conflicts.