THE ANTI-UNION CAMPAIGN

Despite the union’s non-confrontational approach, organizers still met significant opposition from Harvard, which had already managed to dodge unionization efforts twice in the past decade.

In addition, organizers often struggled to convince their own colleagues that having a union to represent them and negotiate on their behalf was in their best interest.

“It’s hard to get people to vote yes, because what they’re voting for is to change the way things are,” Rondeau said.

A group of workers in the Medical Area campus had tried in 1977 and in 1981 to elect a union but failed to gain a majority of employee votes on both occasions.

This time around, individuals working to establish the union expected to face not just a reluctant work force, but also significant opposition from the University.

“People had told me...that Harvard had fought pretty hard against the union, and so we tried to prepare people,” said Manna. While former University President Derek C. Bok acknowledged the right of Harvard’s employees to unionize, he made it clear that the University would oppose any such push.

As union activity picked up in the beginning of 1987—when HUCTW gained national backing from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees—Harvard resorted to a number of anti-union strategies commonly used by employers. “To some extent, Harvard’s campaign was a textbook anti-union campaign,” Jaeger said.

In January of 1988, University administrators distributed union briefing books to supervisors—informational packets which contained lists of legal anti-union statements and highlighted positive aspects of employee contracts at Harvard. And that March, administrators began holding informational meetings for staffers to lay out the University’s anti-union stance.

A NARROW VICTORY

The push to unionize came to a head on May 17, 1988, when HUCTW was put to a vote by all of Harvard’s support staff. Volunteers and organizers sat anxiously in Sanders Theatre for four hours, waiting for the final tally.

Although the union was elected that day by a narrow margin, its battles were far from over. One of its first challenges was confronting a University that still refused to recognize its existence.

“We probably would have been interested in starting some conversations with the people we were going to be negotiating with in the future, but there was no platform for that,” Jaeger said. “The beginnings of the building of a relationship didn’t happen for some months after the election.”

In the months following the vote, Harvard appealed to the NLRB to have the election overturned on the grounds that HUCTW coerced its workers into voting for unionization.

But that fall, Harvard’s appeal was overturned and the University declined to take the case to federal court. That same day, hundreds of Harvard staff and union supporters poured in to Sanders Theater to hear Rondeau and Jackson deliver the triumphant news.

“I think there was a turning point in late 1988...when Derek Bok and [chief University negotiator John T. Dunlop] decided together on behalf of the University to stop fighting and trying to undo the election result,” Jaeger said.

As the University finally came to terms with the reality of HUCTW’s existence, Jaeger said that by the time the first round of negotiations came around, representatives from the union and from management had established a healthy rapport.

“A lot of the best ideas and most important things that we do together still came out of that first negotiation,” said Jaeger. “We went from complete estrangement to a really good energetic, productive, negotiating process in the matter of just a few months.”

—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@ college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @ccahill16.

—Staff writer David W. Kaufman can be reached davidkaufman@ college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @DKauf.