Stand Back, Harvard

LAST week at a one and a half hour meeting on work time at the Harvard University Press, the University's chief anti-union strategist told employees that the choice for or against the union is a business decision, not a moral one, according to an employee who attended. Whether or not the employees base their vote on moral or business considerations is for them to decide. How the university conducts itself, however, over the next five weeks is indeed a moral consideration which every member of the Harvard community must address.

In 1984, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) began its current drive to organize nearly 4000 University support staff employees. Last week, after only three days of negotiation with the National Labor Relations Board, the union and the University reached an agreement on the first-ever campus-wide union election among the University's support staff. The timing of the election--May 17--is a major victory for HUCTW. A post-graduation election date was widely regarded as a disadvantage to the union because the 30 percent of the work force who leave their posts each year do so in the summer.

As HUCTW Director Kris Rondeau said, "The union won that date because of the outpouring of support from the other constituencies who make up the community, especially students. The University will be looking over it's shoulder to see whther or not the students are watching them as they continue to design the final stages of their anti-union campaign."

For the past several weeks the University has been engaging in a campaign to persuade employees to vote against the union. Among other allegations of wrong-doing, the University has held "information" meetings for employees on work time; HUCTW organizers must meet with employees on personal time, such as lunch breaks. Occasionally employees have received invitations to these "information" meetings with the notation that their "managers have been made aware of the day and time of these meetings and join me in encouraging you to attend." Often the departmental Personnel Representative sits in on these meetings, a presence which some employees claim discourages them from asking tough questions of the University representative.

THE National Labor Relations Act states that "it shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees." The University's tactics may in fact be legal, but they may also be violating the spirit of the law by implicitly intimidating University employees.

Already the University's campaign strategy has been publicly condemned by 21 student groups. Massachusetts Congressmen Joseph Kennedy II and Barney Frank have both called on the University to back off, as have the Boston and Cambridge City Councils, all eight Harvard unions, the Cambridge Commission on the Status of Women and several alumni.

That the Harvard administration is opposed to the union is no secret. That an overwhelming number of Harvard's employees, students and neighbors are opposed to Harvard waging an anti-union campaign is equally clear. It is time for the administration to restrain itself until May 17 and let the workers decide.