When the three-year contract expired in 1992, the University climate had changed. Some of the key players in 1989 negotiations had left—Bok stepped down, Dunlap retired, and Rondeau left to work for the New England Organizing Project, an umbrella organization for several Boston-area unions including HUCTW. Without the strong leadership of the first negotiation present, HUCTW and the University struggled to sustain the strong relationship they had previously created.

“When it came time to renegotiate the contract in 1992, it was an entirely different atmosphere than it had [been] the first time around,” said John Hoerr, a former labor reporter for Business Week and author of “We Can’t Eat Prestige,” which details the rise of HUCTW.

“There were people in the environment who thought the economic gains of the first negotiation were excessive and needed to be clawed back,” Jaeger said. “We had a very hard time in 1992 mostly just about economic issues, mostly just about where we were going to stabilize the raise program.”

After 1992, the relationship between the University and HUCTW gradually stabilized and negotiations remained cooperative for around a decade. But when the 2008 recession hit, pressures on the University to cut spending caused a return of tense negotiations as HUCTW tried to prevent job losses.

During the hardest economic years, HUCTW agreed to take pay raise decreases in accordance with spending cuts across the University. But when their contract expired in 2012, HUCTW experienced its “worst-ever” negotiations with the University, according to Jaeger. As the economy recovered, HUCTW believed its members should be getting larger pay raises and more healthcare benefits, but the University claimed it was still hurting from the recession.

“[The recession] produced a kind of stress and frustration in the workplace, which has still really not gone away,” Jaeger added. “Those jobs haven’t really come back.”

Despite economic recovery over the past several years, HUCTW workers have noticed a change in University tone.

“It seems to me the Harvard administration in the last maybe 10 years just has sort of become increasingly corporatized or something,” said Donna Dickerson, a publications coordinator and HUCTW member since its founding. “There’s been a change in their willingness to engage in sort of bilateral discussions. There’s been a sort of hardening over the last few years.”

Jaeger voiced concern that HUCTW has not been getting its desired negotiation agreements because the University is under pressure to speed up growth in other areas such as online education, building in Allston, and the House Renewal Project. However, he suggested that the University doesn’t need to sacrifice worker interests in order to achieve its other goals.

“Our big slogan back in ’89 was ‘it’s not anti-Harvard to be pro-union.’ In the modern era, in 2014, we would say ‘it’s not anti-growth to be pro-taking care of the people in the core,’” Jaeger said.

While they say they have faced recent setbacks, many HUCTW members claim that the mission of the union and its approach to negotiations has remained constant over the last 25 year. Kilcommons, a faculty assistant at the Medical School, expressed optimism about the sustaining role of HUCTW.

“I think that might be the change—it’s no longer a struggling upstart—it has a very defined role, it has a defined culture, people know who we are, that sort of thing,” Kilcommons said.

—Staff writer Noah J. Delwiche can be reached at noah.delwiche@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ndelwiche.

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.