“I would say there are some Harvard administrators and deans who have worked hard with us to get to know each other and to try to understand each other’s concerns and respect each other’s ideas,” Jaeger said.

Meyerson cited Harvard faculty like Lamont University Professor Emeritus John T. Dunlop, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, as a contrast to Yale administrators, who he said have “zero expertise in labor relations.”

Former Harvard General Counsel Anne Taylor, who announced her resignation last June, was noted both by Harvard and union leaders for facilitating negotiations through her personal interactions.

“Especially in the last few years we have developed a very constructive union-management relationship, and I think Anne was primarily responsible for that,” HUCTW Treasurer Donene Williams said in June.

HUCTW, however, was not involved in last spring’s negotiations, which sprang from the most bitter labor dispute in recent Harvard history—the three-week long Mass. Hall sit-in by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) in spring 2001.

Last March, janitors represented by Service Employees International Union Local 254 rallied twice outside Harvard Yard during six weeks of negotiations that eventually ended in wage hikes. In one of the actions, several students and workers were arrested for blocking traffic, but University operations were never disturbed.

Student support has been key to Harvard’s labor interests. Without the sit-in, the committee that recommended wage increases and required parity pay for outsourced workers would never have convened.

PSLM member Daniel DiMaggio ’04 said strikes have broken out at Yale but not at Harvard because the workers in New Haven are more unified.

He noted that Yale’s contract talks for both Local 34 and 35 take place at the same time, while Harvard’s negotiations are staggered. This may hinder the unification of the different labor organizations at Harvard, he said.

“At Yale, it seems that they’ve combined their struggles,” DiMaggio said.

DiMaggio said that Harvard’s relative labor calm is not the result of goodwill on its part.

“The Harvard and Yale administrations are very similar in their commitment to running a university on business principles,” he said. “Things are liable to erupt in both places.”

But from Meyerson’s perspective, Harvard has been more responsive than its New Haven counterpart.

“The fact that the administration would respond to the student sit-in the way it did reflects the understanding that [Harvard] is a community,” Meyerson said.

“I know that things are not perfect at Harvard,” he added. “I think there is a fundamental difference, though...once the workers chose to unionize, there was an acceptance of that, number one, and number two, there have been instances of real engagement.”