Elite Harvard Has a Sophisticated Style of Labor Bashing

Derek C. Bok, Harvard University’s brilliant, liberal and sometimes pro-union president, is giving an aura of respectability to the powerful anti-union forces in the United States.

Despite their vigorous, sophisticated anti-union campaign, Bok and his clever aides lost their latest battle on May 17 when Harvard’s clerical and technical employees voted for union representation by a narrow margin.

But Bok’s 12-year, low-profile war against the union isn’t over by a long shot.

By using typical anti-union maneuvers, the Bok forces probably will succeed in stalling official certification of the union’s victory by the National Labor Relations Board, which conducted the union representation election.

And there is a fair possibility that after delaying certification, Bok can persuade the conservative NLRB to order another election because union activists did some electioneering near voting places, among other things Harvard officials didn’t like.

Union balloons did float close to the polls in the carnival-like atmosphere on Harvard grounds that day as the unionists pressed their get-out-the-vote drive. Management says this may have brought campaigning too close to the polls.

Rules of conduct during union representation balloting are far more stringent than for political elections. What is perfectly normal in political contests is prohibited in labor elections.

Based on a 1967 case, for instance, the NLRB says union representatives cannot keep lists of their supporters who have voted, and then call those who haven’t shown up and urge them to cast their ballots.

If campaign workers of Vice President George Bush or Gov. Michael S. Dukakis do not do just that on Nov. 7, they will be relegated to licking postage stamps for future elections.

Nevertheless, the NLRB has to use its own precedents to decide if the union supporters’ enthusiasm for their cause on their election day at Harvard discouraged voting by those who would have cast secret ballots for management.

If the federal agency agrees that the union engaged in “improper conduct,” it could require another election. That would mean Bok will have yet another opportunity to persuade the Harvard employees to vote against the union.

Moreover, since there is high turnover at Harvard, the union would have to start from scratch to win the backing of newly hired employees.

Bok insists that he is not anti-union, and that unions are just fine--but not at Harvard.

Yet the Harvard strategy is typical of those used in almost all anti-union campaigns. First, management tries to prevent any election at all by urging employees not to sign union authorization cards--30% have to agree in writing that they want a government-conducted union representation election before one is held.

Harvard management tried for years to prevent an election.

If an election is ordered by the NLRB, management typically uses technical objections to delay it, arguing over such questions as the categories of workers that should be allowed to vote.

Harvard raised just such objections.

When a union wins, many anti-union employers challenge the results on almost any technical grounds they can think of to further delay negotiating with the union as the official representative of the employees. That is often done to try to force another election.

Harvard filed just such technical objections.

Bok’s effort to keep Harvard’s clerical and technical employees non-union generally went unnoticed for years, probably because he and his management team won two previous elections.

Union supporters had little reason to make a public display of their losses, and Harvard management hoped the union idea would disappear quietly.

It did not, however, thanks to the determination of union supporters like Kristine Rondeau, the chief organizer, a biologist and Harvard research assistant, and about 20 others who were not discouraged by the Bok-led war against them.

The United Auto Workers was the union involved in the previous elections. The latest struggle, which has been going on for more than five years, is under the auspices of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. The union spent about $500,000 on the campaign.

All of the union organizers worked for several years without pay during both the earlier unionization efforts and the current one.

There were no “outsiders.” Only Harvard employees were directly involved and, gradually, more and more of them joined the drive.

They didn’t put out the usual pro-union literature. Instead, each novice organizer contacted other fellow employees on a one-to-one basis, discussing the need for unionization and answering the claims and charges coming from Bok and others in management.

Some observers called the May 17 victory the most significant white-collar breakthrough for organized labor in many years. It was not, but it was important because of the size and generally good reputation of Harvard and its president.

It was not the first university union election of its kind. AFSCME and other unions already represent tens of thousands of white-collar employees at a host of other prestigious universities, public and private. They include the University of California (AFSCME represents 27,000 there), Yale, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Boston University, Union Theological Seminary and Wayne State.

Gerald McEntee, AFSCME president, agrees that the union’s tentative victory at Harvard was not a breakthrough, but says it shows that tenacious white-collar workers can get a union if they try hard enough, even against such tough opponents as Bok and heavily endowed Harvard.

Labor-bashing by corporate executives and conservative politicians has long been commonplace, and President Reagan, who has done battle with unions himself, is widely regarded as the most anti-union President in modern times.

It became a different ball game, though, when the president of what many regard as America’s greatest university made it appear right and proper for all executives in the public and private sectors to join the war to get, or keep, a “union-free environment” in this country.

When President Reagan crushed the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union in 1981, he strengthened the backbone of those who might otherwise have been reluctant to put on strenuous anti-union campaigns, and he cheered those who already were engaged in such activities.

Bok, however, has a worldwide reputation as a labor scholar and a progressive thinker who has long been known as an admirer of most unions and the role they play in American society.

He and his colleague, Harvard Prof. John T. Dunlop, wrote “Labor and the American Community,” a book many regard as a definitive study of the need for and the importance of unions as a bulwark of American democracy and the free enterprise system.

In that and other books, lectures and articles in professional journals, Bok has eloquently explained and sharply criticized management for using some of the same tactics he is now using to prevent workers from having a union at Harvard.

But he is doing more than that. As president of the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning (it was founded in 1636), Bok is using Harvard’s reputation as an elitist institution to persuade employees that they are somehow above the average worker who might want union representation.

In that soft-sell way, he simultaneously can contend that unions are necessary for many American workers, but not for those at Harvard who are better than ordinary folk.

If the NLRB buys his weak argument about “improper union conduct” during the election, Bok, who so often has advocated unions, may yet win the day.

He could eliminate the union of clerical and technical workers at Harvard and show others how to bash unions in a respectable manner befitting the liberal president of a great university.