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Topics: Work and Empowerment

The Customer is Always Interesting
Unionized Harvard Clericals Renegotiate Work Relationships

"As Harvard employees, we organized our Union around a single idea: that every employee should have the opportunity to participate in making the decisions that affect her or his working life." With this core principle, clerical and technical workers at Harvard University won recognition in 1988 after a decade of slowly building relationships of trust among each other, telling stories about their lives, and about the dignity they demanded as citizens of ther community. They have now taken on the long and hard task of making those participatory ideals a reality in their everyday work relationships and in the formal structures of collaboration with management known as the Joint Councils.

A 54-page essay by Susan Eaton on how Harvard workers have attempted to transform authority relationships and the culture of service work. Her essay examines the issues of gender, invisibility, and "emotional labor" required of service workers, and how the union has developed a language of workplace citizenship and empowerment, and not just "customer service," to democratize work and improve service. She also looks at three extended cases of how the union-management Joint Councils have worked in practice.

Susan Eaton, an editor of CPN, spent more than a decade organizing in the service sector before she returned to academia. She works closely with unions and on labor policy, and is currently in the Industrial and Labor Relations program at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This essay also appears in Working in the Service Society, edited by Cameron Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni, Temple University Press, 1996, and is reprinted with permission. The book can be ordered from the press at Broad and Oxford Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19122.

Contents

Introduction
Context for the Study

Part One

Clerical Work : Gender, Relationships, Emotional Labor, Invisibility
Relational Work: The Power Context
Emotional Labor : Put Your Feelings in a 'Trash Can'
Invisible Labor: Devalued Women's Work

Part Two

Clerical Work in a University Setting and Union Strategies
The Problem of Middle Managers
The Role of Faculty Members
The Role of Students
Clerical Unions and HUCTW: Laying the Groundwork for Participation
Promoting an Alternate Language in Public Service: "The Customer is Always Interesting"

Part Three

Three Cases of "Jointness:" Challenging Invisibility, Renegotiating Relationships
Story 1: Shorter Dental Appointments: "Our Patients will Suffer."
Story 2: The Faculty - Faculty Assistant Work Group: Influence or Authority?
Story 3: The Office Facilitator: "Should This Job Exist?

Part Four

Assessing Participation as a Strategy for Clerical Workers
Conclusion: Participation vs. Control
Sources

Introduction

As Harvard employees, we organized our Union around a single idea: that every employee should have the opportunity to participate in making the decisions that affect her or his working life.
- Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, Letter to new members, 1993

This essay paints a picture of clerical jobs in a gendered workplace, and evaluates an innovative union's efforts to strengthen the participation of its mostly women members in decisions affecting their work.[1] The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), AFSCME, strives successfully to make clerical work more visible and less emotionally one-sided, and supports its members to re-negotiate their work relationships with managers every day.[2] I argue the nature of clerical work organization shapes the unusual worker participation the union seeks. Yet ironically, HUCTW's very success at promoting "jointness" and "participation" in ways acceptable both to white-collar service workers and university managers may inhibit the union's ability to change the deeper inequities of power and control not explicitly challenged by its collaborative stance.

The union described here is unusually feminist and "relational" in its approach, and observers see in it a potential future model for the labor movement. (Hurd, 1993; Hoerr, 1993.) By "relational" I mean an approach to organizing and bargaining embedded in personal relationships and interactions which are mutually empowering, both within and across union-management lines.[3] HUCTW's success is based both in its responsiveness to its members' concerns and interests, and in its pro-active strategy for organized involvement in work itself. HUCTW's novel approach to explicitly renegotiating relationships and participation in work organization holds important lessons for U.S. labor organizations and the women's movement as well as for managers and scholars of work organization.[4]

The paper begins by outlining the context for this study. In Part One, I argue that key features of clerical work from workers' perspectives include its basis in relationships and emotional labor, its frequent invisibility, and its gendered character. In Part Two, I profile the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), AFSCME, and outline the institutional structures which define a university environment. I argue that this union's strategy to make its members' work more visible, more participatory, and less emotionally one-sided is based in its members' specific work experiences. As an example of participation in defining work, I explore the union's ongoing effort to promote an alternate language and practice for management's "customer service" initiative. In Part Three, I sketch three other case examples of labor-management interaction at Harvard to demonstrate the strengths and limits of "participation" as a strategy for worker empowerment and increased productivity. One shows how the union and health technicians handled a traditional speed-up problem. The second shows union leaders explicitly re-negotiating interpersonal relationships with managers, and the potential limits of "participation" without sufficient power to change work organization. The third case shows management permitting clerical union participation in certain decisions while withholding meaningful influence over key underlying choices. I evaluate these cases on their success at using negotiated "jointness" forums to increase employee participation in their work. Throughout Part Three, I use a narrative discourse method, including interviews, stories, and observation.

I conclude in Part Four by assessing the potential of this innovative joint labor-management work in challenging the under-valuation and invisibility of clerical work and workers.[5] The union strategy empowers workers to re-negotiate actual relationships between them and their managers through "self-representation," and demands daily attention, visibility, and increased respect for the white-collar support work union members do. This union challenges the "invisibility" and devaluation of clerical work in a significantly different way than other feminist strategies, such as comparable worth. (See Acker, 1989; Blum, 1991; Cobble, 1993.)[6] Members have experienced dramatic personal changes in their lives which are powerful and even life-changing, including developing leadership skills, confidence, and new insights. My focus here, however, is not principally on individuals and their changes, but on the overall system of work relations.[7] The union's current limits in challenging systemic power inequality may arise from its very success at increasing joint participation and "voice."

Context for the Study

More women work in clerical and administrative jobs than in any other kind of paid employment, including nearly 31% of paid women workers in 1992, part of a total of 14 million administrative workers.[8] Clerical work is classically "gendered" service sector labor.[9] The work itself demands significant emotional labor, pays low wages, and often leaves the worker's role virtually invisible. Its work "products" are often jointly created interactions with others. Although scholars have chronicled the proletarianization of white collar jobs (Braverman, 1974), few document clericals actively influencing the organization of their work.[10] This essay is one effort to fill that gap.

While Harvard is an unusual employer in its public prominence and overall wealth, its 3500 clerical and technical workers in 400 workplaces perform work typical of white-collar service sector jobs. The workers HUCTW represents include secretaries, faculty assistants, health care technicians, computer operators, data analysts, library clerks and specialists, and lab technicians. ( Hurd, 1993; Hoerr, 1993.) Their experiences have important implications for other white-collar workers who experience unsatisfactory working conditions. Feminists' and unionists' efforts to change the way "women's work" is conceptualized could be more closely aligned than they are today, rather than assumed to be in opposition (as in Acker, 1989, 213). The potential success of "feminist unionism" depends on the union, its members, and their interactions with the employer.[11]

Part One

Clerical Work: Gender, Relationships, Emotional Labor, Invisibility

Gender defines clerical workers' consciousness and culture. Rosabeth Moss Kanter's classic research on secretaries in a corporation describes secretaries as the "reserve of the human inside the bureaucratic," whose greatest amount of time was spent on the routine, but whose greatest rewards were garnered for the personal (Kanter, 1977, 70). Her description of the rules governing clerical workers showed that their relationship to their work was patriarchal, not bureaucratic, and quite gendered. For instance, their pay and promotions were frequently tied to those of their bosses, not based on their own skill development and job descriptions.[12] In extreme cases a marriage metaphor has been used to describe the secretary functioning as the "office wife."[13]

While university clerical work may require fewer of these pressures than high-pressured corporate jobs, many of Kanter's insights hold for large non-profit corporations. Professors are just as likely as the businessmen to "manage women by flattery," rather than by formal job descriptions and evaluations, and to tie their loyalty to them individually rather than to the university as a whole. This is reinforced by the decentralization of Harvard, where secretaries are employed directly by a particular school within the university. Clerical workers experience similar tradeoffs, such as a direct relationship with their boss, and some ability to negotiate better working conditions individually.

White women workers dominate clerical work today, although that has not always been the case. (Goldin, 1990, 100-110) More than 99% of all secretaries, 91% of financial records processors, 88% of information clerks, and 80% of all administrative support workers are women. (US Department of Labor , 1993, 196-7) At Harvard, 78% of HUCTW members are women, as are 90% of secretaries and clerks. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of managers are men. In colleges and universities overall, 60% of faculty and 85% of tenured faculty are men. At Harvard, these figures are more skewed. Fully 80% of all faculty and 91.5% of tenured faculty are men at Harvard, so the workplace is even more gendered than most.[14] Women of color make up about 10% of the HUCTW membership. While white women now hold a sizable portion of managerial jobs at lower and middle levels, the majority of clerical work takes place in both a gendered and class context, i.e., a working-class or lower middle-class woman working for an upper-middle class or upper class man.[15]

Relational Work: The Power Context

Clerical work is embedded in personal relationships which define both worker identity and the day-to-day issues of service, production, and satisfaction. Production issues in the clerical workplace frequently center around interpersonal relations, communication, and understanding, usually occurring across a gender, class and power divide. "Labor in general is a process whose determinate forms are shaped by the end result, the product," Braverman wrote in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974, 316). Clerical workers produce documents, letters, reports, and other physical artifacts, but their essential product is relational: for instance, scheduling, buffering, and organizing their supervisor is often a critical part of their jobs. While administrators make efforts to quantify and control the production of clerical workers, their efforts are frequently stymied by the close relationships of clerical workers to their direct supervisors, often professionals with other primary concerns than getting a "fair day's work" out of their secretary (Kanter, 1977). They may care more "when they call in from Gdansk" on a consulting trip, as one administrator put it, that their secretary knows what they want done and how they want it done.[16]

These working relationships occur in a power context; they are more important to the clerical worker than to the faculty member, for example, since the worker is more dependent on their success for her livelihood. While Harvard workers, like most women union members, have more college education than typical union members or non-union clerical workers, they usually do not possess advanced degrees like the faculty they serve. Power between faculty supervisors and clericals is unequally distributed, in economic, educational, and structural terms.

A fluid combination of factors determines how well the interactions which comprise service work are completed according to all the parties involved.[17] Production in the service sector is evaluated by "customers" not only in measurable terms such as workload completed, but also in terms of the quality of relationship or interaction with the service provider. In health care, managers frequently seek to measure productivity quantitatively, by patients per hour, revenues per bed, and the like. The first case described here arose from a management effort to increase productivity for dental hygienists, which the employees experienced as a speed-up.

Clerical workers are often pressed to perform more quantifiable "productive" work, in less time. However, work organization issues in the clerical workplace are also relational issues, and participation in decisions frequently occurs in the context of particular ongoing personal work relationships. [18] Negotiated solutions to problems may be individualized, based on a particular understanding between as few as two parties, rather than generalizable and based on quantitative variables, such as the line speed in an auto plant. For clerical workers, a simple increase in communication may lessen the stress they experience. Managers may avoid this process for their own reasons. For instance, one Harvard clerical complained that the professor who supervised her communicated with her only via voice mail, and would not speak to her in person. She felt this denied her the opportunity to create a good working relationship and to be recognized as human rather than machine.

Emotional Labor : Put Your Feelings in a 'Trash Can'

Closely tied to the relational nature of clerical work is the requirement that most workers perform "emotional labor." By this I mean workers' managing their own emotions in the service of the job, and being required to maintain a particular attitude toward their supervisor, client or customer. (Hochschild, 1983) While "service with a smile" is not demanded as aggressively in a university context as in the airline Hochschild describes, clerical workers are routinely evaluated for their attitude and ability to get along with other people, especially their boss. One faculty assistant told me she was praised in her evaluation not for her computer skills and organization, but for being so "cheerful." Another said, "Making everybody happy is a major goal of our job." To the clericals, having a faculty member "mad at you" is a very undesirable state of affairs. "The job should be livable, not just give, give, give. You can't sustain that without bitterness. We need to have different ways to think about work, not just as a tap dance to keep someone else happy," said one clerical worker. At universities as in corporations, secretaries are expected to serve as a gatekeeper and buffer, weeding out undesirable calls and visits. When students cannot express anger to faculty because of his or her inaccessibility or their own lack of power, they are likely to express it to the secretary. The secretary is in a truly difficult situation, attempting to preserve relationships with strangers, and still protect the professors' calendar.

Some university training seems to acknowledge the workers' emotional dilemma, but one such session has become legendary for its demeaning message to workers about controlling their emotional reaction to difficult clients. While addressing the highly stressed Financial Aid office staff, a trainer told workers who were upset by angry students' rebukes to "think of yourself as a trash can. Take everyone's little bits of anger all day, put it inside you, and at the end of the day, just pour it in the dumpster on your way out the door." Not surprisingly, workers found this advice "offensive and not helpful," says Carrie Normand, then a clerical worker and now a HUCTW organizer. "One of my friends tried to show how ridiculous it was. He said, 'Oh, it's just like being a toilet, and we should just flush everything, is that right?' And she didn't even get it. She said, 'Yes, that's it!'" [19]

These recommended techniques for dealing with hostile or angry clients recall Hochschild's description of flight attendant training (1983). In both cases, trainers are effectively holding the service worker responsible for "handling" any unpleasantness from the client, and trying to get workers to ignore or suppress their predictable emotional responses of anger, distress, or revenge. Management does not endorse these images of workers, says Harvard's Asssistant Director of Labor Relations Lianne Sullivan. [20] Nonetheless, this "trash can" story has made the rounds of Harvard clerical workers. It became part of the workers' culture, demonstrating the need for an organized union voice to demand more sensitive managers and fair treatment. For workers, thinking of oneself as a trash can is not a satisfactory solution to their concerns about dealing with unhappy students, faculty, or members of the public. To be effective, union strategy must provide an alternate option which empowers rather than humiliating workers dealing with emotional demands. The customer service training described below is such a strategy.

Deborah Kolb argues that behind-the-scenes conflict resolution is frequently performed by women in the workplace but not officially acknowledged (Kolb, 1992). This special type of emotional work occurs not only among female professionals but among secretaries and technical workers. Dental hygienists at Harvard explained they have to "interpret" what the dentists say to patients, "because the doctors are so rushed... One doctor told a patient she had to have thirteen fillings and walked out. The patient burst into tears, and I had to stay there and console her and try to tell her it wasn't so bad. Often I have to explain what the doctor meant by what he said." [21] Clericals told similar stories of moderating and re-interpreting cryptic or rude faculty member comments to students and other workers. This is all "making everything smoother," which is not in any job description, but still is essential work.

Invisible Labor: Devalued Women's Work

Besides emotional labor demands, clerical workers often suffers from their work's lack of recognized value. Most of the work done by predominantly female clericals is literally invisible. The memos and reports they type have "their" faculty members' name on them. The course packets they put together, the materials they arrange for permission to photocopy, the syllabi they produce and reproduce, the letters they write—all are signed by their supervisor's name, not by theirs. As support staff, their role is literally to "support" the person to whom they are assigned. Their work becomes incorporated into "his" work, in nearly all cases. Like so much predominantly female caretaking work, theirs is rarely publicly acknowledged or recognized, which makes it easy to devalue.

Another aspect of clerical invisibility is that the specific nature of the work is not well understood. Many faculty members, especially if they have never performed clerical work, think it is simpler than it actually is. [22] The myriad number of steps required to type, edit, correct, format, proof, print, duplicate, collate, staple, and distribute any single document, even with computer technology, are not often part of their consciousness. Often, workers report, their supervisors simultaneously want the clerical worker available to them, and want work done which requires travel to other parts of the workplace. "They (faculty) always get upset with us if we're away from our desks, even if we're off doing their projects... then we get back and they're mad at us because we weren't there," said one faculty assistant. Lack of understanding translates into an assumption of unimportance.

Joan Acker has documented the ways much emotional labor support staff do remains invisible—to the extent that male evaluators in an Oregon pay equity study were reluctant to put it down on job evaluation forms. [23] "The types of knowledge perceived as natural to women have to do with caring, nurturing, mediating, organizing, facilitating, supporting, and managing multiple demands simultaneously. In the Oregon study, women job evaluators had difficulty in making these job skills visible to the men." (Acker, 1989, 213)

This type of work is performed daily at Harvard, and in virtually every other white-collar setting. One faculty secretary told me, "Besides keeping the faculty happy, I am working in the community, to make the whole thing smoother, to help other people when there is a crisis, to help the union, to bring in recycling for the school." [24] This kind of work is seldom recognized. The workers also help the divergent pieces of their university roles and assignments fit together into a whole, without which real value is lost.

In their meetings with management, workers spend a lot of time explaining to their managers or faculty members what it is they do, and what takes time. Much of what they do appears to be taken for granted. "They didn't understand how many steps it takes to get a project done," explained one faculty assistant. The contract campaigns of the union exemplify the ongoing effort for literal and symbolic recognition of the value of HUCTW members' work. Even today, the union's "desk stickers," plastered on copying machines and file drawers, read: "Harvard Works Because We Do." The union performs a great deal of "interpretive" and integrative work in helping workers understand their importance to the functioning of the university overall. [25]

In sum, much clerical work can be described as gendered, based in human relationships, requiring emotional labor, and frequently invisible. Efforts like HUCTW's and Harvard's to encourage worker participation in defining work must take account of these qualities. Next, the paper introduces the participation theme by outlining the institutional context of a university setting.

Part Two

Clerical Work in a University Setting and Union Strategies

Joint labor-management work or worker participation in any setting is shaped by the institutional power structure. In a university, complex relationships form between workers, managers, students, and faculty members. Ordinary complexities are heightened by the gender and class differences explored above. In a corporate office, clerical workers frequently have two lines of supervision. (Kanter, 1977) While their direct supervisor is often a professional worker or manager, they also have accountability to a human resources person or office manager/coordinator. A university context also highlights this tension, since "human resources" staff are indirect supervisors who hire, fire, and are responsible for overall efficiency.

The Problem of Middle Managers

In the university setting, middle managers administer the support services required for the quality education of future professionals, and for conducting research. Yet managers are more limited in their ability to exercise power than in a traditional private sector corporation. Their influence is leavened by the presence of a powerful interest group of faculty members, themselves deeply divided by discipline, rank, and tenure status, but sharing certain interests in common. Often, the faculty, not the managers, directly supervise the clerical and secretarial staff.

Middle managers' lack of power is a problem endemic to the service sector and the university. The mid-level managers who do not have major decision-making authority but are looked to by union and workers for relief of problems may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to defend policies they did not create, while at the same time they often cannot effectively exercise influence upwards. At Harvard, most labor-management groups include middle managers but not top administrators.

Middle managers also have no protection if they challenge existing arrangements. When asked why they thought managers were resistant or non-responsive to efforts to communicate through labor-management Joint Councils , one worker said "They aren't like us in the union. They are afraid. They have no back-up. If they make a mistake, they're out the door." Thus, he says, they have problems getting certain jointly agreed upon changes enacted.

The Role of Faculty Members

Faculty have a different set of interests than managers. They have teaching, research, consulting, advising, and administrative work to do. In clerical matters, they want to have a good relationship with a qualified and reliable support person who will look out for their interests. They are usually not held accountable directly for cost, uniformity of practice, precedent, or overall organizational issues. While they often appear both more positive and more powerful to union members than administrators do, especially in joint labor-management settings, their behavior often reflects the different institutional and personal pressures on them. Faculty have less to lose than managers in being benevolent to staff (which does not mean that all of them are). [26]

Faculty tend to develop their individual relationship with a secretary into one which will benefit them when they need help, irrespective of rules. Faculty create the daily context for emotional labor much more directly than administrators, and they may demand (or inspire) personal loyalty over institutional loyalty. Like all secretaries, Harvard clerical workers sometimes come to identify with and support their bosses, in part because their rewards and recognition come primarily through what Kanter calls "the patriarchal system." Invisibility is another problem endemic to the faculty-support staff relationship, since most faculty trained in an intellectual world attend more to the power of ideas than to the details of getting them in print. The value of their secretarial support is infrequently noted.

The Role of Students

Students do not appear in most of the stories clerical workers or managers tell about their working relationships. They are often transient, and thus relatively powerless in the work of the university, especially at Harvard where demand for places far exceeds supply. A class gap also exists between workers and students; although many clerical workers attended college, most did not attend an Ivy-league college or enjoy the many opportunities for their futures that young people at Harvard seem to have. One secretary said one summer student told a taxi drive to set his luggage in front of her desk and asked her how she would be getting it to his room for him. Clericals serve as the administrative "connector" between students and the university. A modestly paid worker administering a policy she did not make can be "dumped on" by a student—who is now relatively junior in the hierarchy, but will soon be quite privileged.

Students are a special segment of the "public" faced by "public contact" workers in financial aid, healthcare and housing departments. [27] Students' apparent lack of importance is ironic since they are the largest constituency of the university (besides alumnae). HUCTW is disadvantaged by the relative powerlessness of students since their interests potentially overlap: for instance, better facilities, higher staffing, better training of support staff, and other areas could be mutual interests. Their interests could also conflict in areas such as total cost of an education or worker health benefits. The case of the dental workers shows union members defending the rights of students to be treated well as patients rather than receiving shorter appointments and lower quality care.

Clerical Unions and HUCTW: Laying the Groundwork for Participation

Clerical workers are organized into unions at a relatively low rate in the US, with 15.7% of all administrative workers represented by unions, mostly in the public sector. (US Department of Labor, 1993, 239) An internal debate continues within some U.S. labor unions about the organizability of clerical workers, and the adequacy of efforts to organize them. In other countries, many more clerical workers have organized into unions. In Canada, for instance, 32% of clerical workers belong to unions, although they are concentrated in the direct government and the broader public sector, such as health care. (Eaton, 1993a) Even more clericals are organized in European industrialized countries.

Many U.S. clerical workers and women have no personal history with unions, and do not know much about them. One after another told me in interviews that before HUCTW they were unfamiliar with unions "not like the Teamsters with Jimmy Hoffa, unions that weren't threatening and scary." Their initial reaction to unionization is based on conventional media images of male-dominated, corrupt, powerful and distant organizations rather than on a home-grown or grass-roots, female-led organization advocating "kindness and respect" and seeking to create a "community at work." [28] (Eaton, 1992) In many cases the Harvard union consciously disassociated itself from other unions, explaining that it was "different" than "those other unions" its members may have known.

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), Local 3650 of AFSCME, has developed an innovative and unique approach to labor-management "jointness" and "participation" in clerical work. Harvard workers voted for HUCTW as their union in 1988, after a long 14-year organizing effort. (Hoerr, 1993) Management sponsored a strong anti-union campaign despite the union's decision not to run an anti-Harvard campaign. [29] Before negotiating the first contract, management and union members held joint sessions in which nearly 100 mostly female clerical and technical workers told "stories" about their work lives to managers who had never before been required to listen to them as equals. In the union leaders' understanding, telling their "stories" to managers during the pre-negotiation period set a model for the new kind of participation and joint sharing of experience that they hoped would characterize the labor-management relationship.

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) adds a new element to the traditional power-imbalanced male-female scenario which Kanter describes (1977). The union provides a voice, a legal entity, and an organized presence in the workplace in which clericals can participate, and through which they can re-negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment. [30] HUCTW has chosen an unusual and explicitly gendered approach to its organizing work, emphasizing "kindness and respect" as its motto in treatment of everyone. The union focuses on mutual "listening" rather than "demanding" as a negotiation strategy, and its leaders explicitly credit feminist research with reinforcing and expanding its founders' strategies. [31]

The union was founded and organized principally but not solely by women. Current HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger reports: "It [the union] definitely celebrates women's ways of learning and leading, but does that without malice toward men." (Hoerr, 1993, 74) HUCTW's executive board consists of 71% women, and its principal officers are 75% women. Many observers feel HUCTW represents a new "feminine model of organizing" and important development. (Hurd, 1993, Eaton, 1992, Rondeau, 1991)

HUCTW organizers planned a conscious strategy to appeal to the clerical workforce, and their strategy evolved from the concerns of the workers they sought to represent. They specifically sought to address the issues of emotional labor, gendered workplaces, relational work, and invisibility of their members' efforts. Their goals include creating a "community at work," negotiating greater and genuine participation for members in the decisions that affect their work lives, and improving the daily conditions of members' lives through self-representation.

The collegial and self-governing environment of a university served as a reference point and validation for their aspirations. [32] "We are sure no Harvard administrator or professor would ever abdicate a right to participate in decision making, and we can no longer afford to give up that right ourselves," asserts the HUCTW 1988 Statement of Principles, We Believe in Ourselves. In addition, organizers sought to create an alternate discourse about the meaning of work and the role of workers—one in which clerical and technical workers are recognized and respected for their invaluable contributions. The union's strategy has evolved from being very non-threatening ("It's not anti-Harvard to be pro-union" was one early slogan), to being more assertive about members' roles. HUCTW's aspirations for re-organizing work are focused on a strategy of "participation." The next sections illustrate the possibilities and limits of this goal.

The first clerical union contract at Harvard (1989) created an unusual model labor-management relationship, emphasizing decentralized decision-making and problem-solving focused at the local area and department level. [33] Most details of employment relations remained in the personnel manual, which had been "jointly re-written" during bargaining. To promote ongoing clerical and technical worker input into the organization of work, the contract contained no management rights clause and no "inflexible work rules." (Hoerr, 1993)

In the first contract article, the parties agreed to "build a framework for greater employee participation at Harvard," and to take up issues related to work organization or policy ("all workplace matters which have a significant impact on staff") in local bipartite bodies called "Joint Councils." (HUCTW-Harvard Agreement, 1989) This allowed them to consider both current policy and proposed changes affecting workplace and workforce arrangements. The Joint Councils were to "work in a spirit of trust and cooperation to reach consensus," and make recommendations to deans or vice presidents, who would "seriously consider and respond promptly" to them. If no consensus was reached, matters could be referred to a University-wide Joint Council, which could proceed to mediation and then arbitration. As of 1994, 42 Joint Councils meet regularly around the university, with approximately 140 elected union representatives and the same number of appointed university managers. [34]

HUCTW leaders use the word "jointness" to describe what they are trying to achieve for their members at the university. Union members say it means recognizing and including them in decisions which affect their working lives. Some managers seem to think this means "co-management," something John Hoerr points out the union has never sought, [35] while others simply think it means increasing the role of the union in a pro forma consulting role. Neither correctly describes what the union has in mind. Contemporary labor-management relations research sheds light on the overall national context for this work, placing HUCTW somewhere between the Saturn-UAW auto plant, and less participatory non-negotiated forms of employee consultation. (Applebaum and Batt, 1993; Kochan and Osterman, 1994; Freeman and Rogers, 1994)

HUCTW director Bill Jaeger describes one example of where "jointness" would have made a difference to his members.

Before the union, I remember seeing one of my co-workers who was extremely unhappy. Her manager had ordered new computers for the department, and she had a new work station with green characters on the screen. However, she had worked on computers before, and she knew that amber screens were easier on the eyes. Since the two colors cost the same, if they had asked her, she could have made a contribution at least for herself and maybe also for others by choosing the amber screen. But they never asked. That's when I knew we needed a way that workers could have a bigger voice in their jobs.

While this is a simple example, Harvard workers give dozens more where they believe their participation can make work better for them and for the university.

The Joint Councils consist of union and university representatives from an entire school or administrative department, such as the Education School, the Medical School or Business School. Some have a small area covering 100 or fewer employees, such as the University Health Services or the Design School. Others are vast, with more than 500 employees covered. The contract encourages the creation of sub-committees and sub-councils, which have sprung up around the university, created locally to deal with a specific issue. This pattern of setting up smaller or informal groups in addition to the formal Joint Council structure has become so frequent that the union calls it "episodic jointness." In some cases, such as the "public service training" described below, the union has gone outside joint structures and created its own space from which to organize participation. The leaders believe this lays the basis for a more equal relationship.

Promoting an Alternate Language in Public Service: "The Customer is Always Interesting"

The union does not rely only on joint labor-management work to promote its vision of how workers can make a difference at work. In its new "customer service" training, the union creates its own alternate language and vision of worker responsibility, in direct contradiction to the university's paradigm. The union is performing interpretive work for members, attempting to challenge a dominant ideology which positions white-collar service workers as being "always wrong" if the customer is "always right."

The idea that "the customer is always right," an overused slogan of the "Customer Service Model" of the 1970s and 1980s, requires serious rethinking, from the perspective of those who "serve" the customer. "If the customer is always right, we're always wrong," said one HUCTW member. Unions representing service workers can make a valuable contribution to such re-thinking. Even in non-profit organizations, management consultants often focus on the "customer" as a way of talking about clients, patients, the public, or whoever is benefiting from the service provided by the non-profit.

HUCTW has developed an alternative language and way of thinking about "customer service." Union members agree that "we want to help people. Listening well to them, and trying to understand the concerns that they bring into any situation is a way that people in jobs like ours can help people," as Bill Jaeger puts it. But they object to what they call the "lack of balance" in the university's approaches.

The union leaders strongly object to the comparison to private sector models. "This isn't K-Mart," says Carrier Normand. "We have to be really careful about for-profit sector models and attitudes," says Jaeger. "We talk about 'public service' to resist efforts that are sometimes made to compare our work to commercial transactions. Different goals and ideas motivate the work that we do and the organizations we are in." The union calls the people whom their members serve "help-seekers" or "the public" if they are not students, faculty, or another defined constituency. Half the union's members work in support areas in the university which are not directly connected to teaching or research--such as Harvard Real Estate, University Health Services, or Financial Aid. Workers in these areas are more likely to have jobs which require them to deal with a "steady stream of help-seekers," and to have pressures put on them for increased "productivity," as do health-care workers. [36] But even workers in academic departments face this issue. A committee of union staff and activists designed a pilot training for unionized clerical workers in the union's alternate model of "public service," tentatively entitled "The Customer is Always Interesting." This training was developed "out of the concerns and aspirations of the workers who do this kind of work... emphasizing the idea that one of the ingredients in healthy transactions is that kind of a dignified or self-respecting position for the service provider." [37]

The model for customer or client service, union members say, must provide not only for the satisfaction of the public but also for that of the worker. In nearly every job the union represents, workers have some set of challenges when members of the public come to them for service. "Why not start from the place that making the customer happy is not going to go well unless both people are happy and having their needs met in that transaction?" asks Jaeger. [38] Union members report that most training they have had from management ignores the interests of front-line workers, as in the now-famous "trash can" training described above. "Our jobs.. are about the very complicated management of disagreements, basically, in a constant daily kind of way, in a very diverse community," says Jaeger. [39]

The training series is important because, along with the Joint Councils, work groups, and problem-solving teams, it represents a way for workers to articulate their perspective collectively, to share it with others, and to make their experience visible. The union becomes a place for "framing" the issues of how to deal with problems on the job, and how to think differently about ideas management is promoting. The training itself provides an alternative "space" for developing a language and vision respectful of worker concerns. [40] The training, besides teaching specific skills, will give workers an opportunity to tell stories to each other and to share solutions. "There's no sense [among management] of training each other here," says HUCTW's Normand, "even though it's a university. No sense that we're a community of learners. There's a sense that if you're only a staff assistant, you're not thinking."

Part Three

Three Cases of "Jointness:" Challenging Invisibility, Renegotiating Relationships

To understand what these workers gain in practice from workplace-based renegotiation of work and relationships, I chose three "stories" or mini-case studies from the Harvard experience. These three cases occurred under the "jurisdiction" of three different Joint Councils. They demonstrate the power and success which the union has enjoyed in renegotiating work relationships on a day-to-day basis, but each one suggests a different limit to the union's collaborative "participation" approach. I chose these "stories" in part because they are widely known by members as examples of successes, so they have a value and influence beyond the individuals they directly affect; they are part of the workers' and union culture. At the same time, they demonstrate perhaps the union's most basic challenge: changing the unequal power relationships at the university through a strategy of "jointness."

Story 1: Shorter Dental Appointments: "Our Patients will Suffer."

The first case exemplifies the union's role outside the formal Joint Council structure in supporting workers struggling with day-to-day problems of visibility and power. In this case, the union supported several technical workers in their collaborative and respectful, but firm and ultimately successful opposition to a speed-up in their work schedules. [41]

At the University Health Services (UHS), HUCTW played an important role in helping technical workers make a case that a portion of their work was largely unrecognized in formal productivity measures. UHS provides medical and preventive care to Harvard students, affiliates, faculty and employees. About 400 workers are employed in UHS, and 125 of them are represented by HUCTW. The three registered dental hygienists who complained to the union in 1993 are responsible for regular dental cleanings, patient education, infection control, and performing triage to decide which patients need to see a dentist. The three hygienists have a minimum of two years of technical training, and varying levels of experience. One hygienist had been working at UHS for 27 years, the other two for less than five years. None had been active in the union before this incident.

The dental hygienists are evaluated for their "production," meaning the number of patients they see in the time available. They are scheduled for ten 45-minute appointments a day, or fifty a week. But not every patient shows up, and some cannot be treated if they do show up because of illness. Some weeks, as a result, the hygienists' "production" is in the low to mid-40s. A clinic administrator told them she was going to change some of their appointments each day to 30-minute appointments, to "bring their production up." The hygienists told me calmly:

...We discussed it and we decided we didn't want to do it. We felt it was not fair to the patient, not to mention that it was not fair to us too, or the extra stress we would feel. But mostly we felt it was not fair to the patient.

They were worried they would not have time to do infection control procedures properly, or to educate the patient about home care, especially new patients. Many of their patients have not had prior access to routine dental care, so cleanings are more difficult and lengthy. They also keep records, and make reminder calls.

After some discussion with supervisors, they believed the idea had been dropped, and nothing changed for six months. Then one of the hygienists noticed on the computer that her next day's appointments had been shortened --without even a notice! This apparently unilateral action mobilized the hygienists, and one called the union. Union director Bill Jaeger came and talked with them, and "helped us organize our ideas," according to one hygienist. He offered to meet with the clinic director with them, but they wanted first to try on their own. [42]

Each worker did research, one with the dental school on their appointment times and one on the reasons for "low production." Hygienist Lisa Flanagan made a computerized packet of information presenting the hygienists' case. Her headings included "Quality of Care," "Increased Failure Rate and Decreased Production," "Patient Perception and UHS Reputation," and a set of new procedures the hygienists felt should be implemented by others if this new schedule went into effect. Flanagan attached copies of UHS's own newsletter with articles about the quality of care, and highlighted notes about excellence, holding the employer accountable to its own standards. She attached a computerized chart and bar graph showing the failure percentage (i.e., the number of patients who did not show up) was between 4 and 7%, not 20% as had been rumored.

The dental hygienists worked hard to make their presentation "professional" and to stress their concern for patient care, especially infection control, record keeping, and patient relationships. One of their concerns was that patients not feel "rushed." They predicted unforeseen side effects which might occur with the new schedule, since they would not have time to complete bite-wing x-rays, reminder calls, etc. They even projected that the doctors' production levels might fall —since hygienists would have less time to refer patients to dentists.

Fortified with their extensive materials, the women set up a meeting with the clinic's chief dentist. They pointed out they were being "punished" for events beyond their control, like patient cancellations or no-shows, and they explained in minute detail the exact work they were doing in patient education and record-keeping. The dentist said he had "forgotten" they were doing all those extra things. He didn't want them to be unhappy. Before they completed their arguments, he agreed to return to the longer appointments.

Theoretically, this could have occurred without a union. However, the story would not have been the same. The HUCTW was more than a "back-up" if their meeting with the dental manager had not gone well. Union staff validated the hygienists' concerns, helped them think through their approach in an integrative fashion, supported them to meet as equals with the director, and encouraged them to use their own knowledge of the job. Because of HUCTW, the technicians knew their jobs were not on the line for asserting their interests. The hygienists acknowledged the positive role of the union, and also felt good about their own representation of their interests. They were a little surprised that the dentist didn't want them to be so unhappy, and that they had the power to resist the shortening of their patient appointments. Even though one of the hygienists had been there nearly 30 years, none of them seemed sure that they could win this issue.

The victory won for workers was more than keeping the 45-minute appointments. The hygienists communicated directly with the head of the clinic. He admitted he did not know all the work they did, and he validated their account of their work. This level of increased communication, visibility, and respect seems as important to workers and the union staff as the actual victory, although the two are tied together. Hygienists also gained valuable recognition of their contribution, made their work visible, and gained experience and confidence at making a presentation to a doctor and supervisor. They actively redefined productivity, and pointed out the costs of not doing the unrecognized integrative work they perform each day. Many of these gains would have existed even if they had lost their case.

The larger implications of this fight are less clear. Will it empower these workers to stand up for other issues involving patient care as well as their own working conditions? Will it change the relations of power and control at the clinic? [43] Is this just a temporary reprieve? Finally, is this effort expressive of defensive craft unionism—or is it a successful effort to have a voice in decisions made about the work? I suggest this example represents both, where"defending" the status quo brought about an increase in visibility and respect between hygienists and their boss. If appointments had been shortened permanently, the results would likely have been worse for everyone: patients, doctors, and technical workers.

Story 2: The Faculty - Faculty Assistant Work Group:
Influence or Authority?

The second case demonstrates the importance to workers of re-negotiating personal relationships with faculty members, and the union's role in insuring that workers are treated respectfully and with equality. Because of the power imbalance in university clerical jobs, any effort at jointness which increases direct communication with supervisors and forces recognition of the worth of clerical workers' jobs is highly valued by union members. At Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG), creating a Faculty/ Faculty Assistant Joint Council was the way HUCTW leaders helped turn a bad proposal (from the assistants' perspective) into an opportunity for increasing participation and communication. They thus transformed a potential win/lose confrontation into a win/win one, at least from their viewpoint. The faculty co-chair agrees, but is more reserved, saying "we've done a reasonable job.... personally and professionally we've learned a bit more." [44]

Shari Levinson, an energetic, articulate faculty assistant at the Kennedy School of Government, became union co-chair of the Council because of both "relational" and workload concerns:

The [administration] had an idea to restructure the faculty assistants in "clusters"... There would be four or five faculty assistants working for a group of faculty, and they would share workloads, but somehow keep the primary relationship with their faculty person. It sounded like a secretarial pool to us. It seemed it would add a layer of supervision in the pool to dole out the work. We thought we would have 20 faculty descending on us, and one huge in box and out box. We thought it would depersonalize the work, and increase the workload, and reduce our ratio... Now we have two senior or three junior faculty. It sounded like in this system we would have four or five apiece. We hated it. [45]

While the cluster idea was ultimately abandoned by administrators, Levinson says that the proposal raised other issues about how faculty assistants were not consulted about decisions affecting their work. "We wanted to be there and tell what it's like from our point of view," she explained. "So the union and the faculty assistants decided to take the Joint Council model and apply it to a smaller group. We proposed a committee made up of faculty and faculty assistants themselves. We had a lot to say!"

The resulting Faculty-Faculty Assistant Joint Council increased both communication and understanding about secretarial work. For six months, three faculty and three faculty assistants worked through their perceptions of what the other's jobs consisted of. All the members were somewhat surprised to learn what their counterparts did with their time. Levinson recalls:

We thought their primary job was to teach! Boy, were we off base! We are the connection between the faculty and school... so teaching is a primary focus for us. But they told us about their research, and their consulting, and their administrative duties, and their projects... For their part, they didn't realize what we were juggling. They didn't understand what it takes to get anything done.

Gender played a role in the Joint Council's slow progress. Levinson recalls that at first, the power dynamic between the male professors and female secretaries was "a little overwhelming" to the women. She said, "They speak differently. They want to analyze and measure everything. We can do that, but we don't think that way about our jobs. They kept wanting to ask, 'What problem are we here to solve?'" The faculty assistants, however, felt that coming to understand each others' jobs was really part of the problem they were trying to solve. KSG Professor and Joint Council faculty co-chair Herman "Dutch" Leonard agrees with the union view that "we are not a complaint center. We are trying to examine the nature of the work, the relationship." [46] He sees the Joint Council as a place for reflecting on and renegotiating the workplace experience and relationships, it appears.

Council members tried to expand their newly acquired mutual understandings to a larger constituency, effectively raising the visibility of clerical jobs to a new level. A year into its existence, the Council sponsored an orientation program for new faculty members and new faculty assistants. It included a skit featuring role reversals where a dean played a faculty assistant and vice versa, as well as a "desert survival" (NASA version) game designed to get staff to work together as equals at least during that exercise. "It seemed revolutionary," says one assistant. "The hierarchy here is so separate. But it's still rare. The only complaint was from one faculty member who didn't do well." Both the invisibility and devaluing of clerical work were challenged by this event, with support from the faculty Council members in their willingness to play clerical roles.

Ironically, the Desert Island exercise may also demonstrate the current limits of "participation." The Council's successful orientation session was followed by a failure to achieve a change in the system of assigning faculty and assistants in a school which has a 30% turnover of assistants and many new or visiting faculty each year. The current system, organized by administrators, takes factors such as space, proximity, remodeling, and the staff-to-faculty ratio into account in making assignments. Neither faculty nor assistant preferences are factored in specifically. For six months, the Joint Council discussed ways to incorporate both faculty needs and skills (such as computer use, transcriptions, typing) and assistant preferences and skills (such as budgeting, report-producing, conferences) into the system. However, even with three faculty members (one of whom was a dean) on their committee, the Council apparently could not persuade administrative managers to incorporate their concerns into the process. "It was hard," says faculty assistant Levinson. "It did not happen. But we'll keep working on it." The faculty manager, however, has a different view; Dutch Leonard says the administration is "trying to match people better, but... we don't want the committee to be participating in the administrative process." Still, if the group cannot influence the administrative process, what is its "participation" supposed to be accomplishing?

The Faculty - Faculty Assistant Work Group demonstrates both strengths and weaknesses of the union efforts to achieve "voice" or participation. From many clerical workers' perspectives, positive, interdependent personal relationships with faculty supervisors are a key part of autonomous and dignified work environments. While it is difficult to negotiate these in a joint committee, workers want to preserve the "space" to make these relationships the best they can. This includes resisting "clusters," typing pools, and other administrative controls on their direct personal relationships with faculty. A second lesson is that working relationships and productivity can be improved by genuine contributions from everyone. For instance, the orientation session assisted both faculty and assistants in working together better, and a new assignment system could dramatically improve satisfaction with the matching of skill and interest on all sides. Third, "jointness" means grappling with issues of gender as well as economic and political power. The assistants have to learn to deal with their faculty counterparts' "overpowering" styles, more constrained schedules, and different approaches to problems.

Members appear satisfied with the union's work here, however. "It ha a magnitude and an impact," one said of the Council. Efforts at "jointness" which increase direct communication are highly valued by clerical workers and secretaries, even if they do not overtly challenge underlying inequalities. At least in a university environment, clericals expect that increased understanding will lead directly to improved working conditions for them. For instance, if their supervisors understand why the assistants are away from their desks, the faculty will not be "mad" when they return and the assistants' day-to-day lives will improve. This case lends support to Richard Hurd's argument that "the desire of clericals to seek justice while preserving harmony in the workplace" is made possible through the contractual Joint Council structure. (Hurd, 1993, 344) Carol Gilligan might see here women workers' desires to "preserve connection" at work, while not giving up the right to their own voice. (Gilligan, 1979) In a more practical vein, I see workers striving to maintain control of a key power relationship with faculty rather than being assigned to a typing pool. [47]

Yet a genuine desire to "preserve harmony" or "connection" leads to certain harsh realities. It seems likely the faculty members could have more successfully influenced the assignment process if they strongly desired to do so. A management person says the Council "has a reasonable degree of influence, but no authority," articulating a management view of how things should work—which the union members cannot contest effectively at this point. All Joint Councils require a majority vote to make recommendations to deans, who make decisions. The unionists view "jointness" as a process of negotiating and increased understanding, not explicitly as a power play. Yet, HUCTW members do want the Joint Councils to exert authority and make effective change after processing the issues from all sides. This inevitably raises issues of power and decision-making at the university. After eighteen months, management is minimizing the formal influence of the committee, while the union members are still hoping that they will be able to make significant administrative change over time. The key question is how power relationships will be changed? How can the committee have real influence if it has no authority? HUCTW President Donene Williams says the union has to fight for change, and stay well organized to have power they need. [48]

This case also highlights the impossibility of separating relational issues from work concerns for white-collar service workers like clericals. The relationships seem more important to the clerical workers than to their supervisors, perhaps because the clericals have more stake in the particular relations with faculty than vice versa. Further, clericals are willing to give this process time and attention, while faculty have other demands and "less time," according to one faculty member.

Story 3: The Office Facilitator: "Should This Job Exist?

The third case example shows clericals resisting administrative micro-supervision of secretarial work in response to a management effort to increase efficiency. As a result, union members became involved in hiring their own new administrative "coordinator." The union strategy was to empower a small group to organize worker participation in defining a proposed new coordinating job which managers wanted to create, again raising the visibility of clerical work. In this case, management allowed union"participation" at one level, the development of a job description and hiring of a candidate, while prohibiting participation in the key decision that the contested new position was necessary. This case shows the value of "participation" but also its current limits, when it does not include a voice in basic choices about work.

At the Harvard Business School, elevators are panelled with polished granite and desks are covered in beautiful dark cherry wood. The contrast with anywhere else on campus, even at wealthy Harvard, is dramatic. HBS employs 190 faculty and 75 faculty secretaries. In the most famous management training school in the country, tension between administrators' goals, faculty needs, and secretarial concerns gave rise to a joint working group which has met with mixed success.

Kathy Randel is a faculty secretary at Harvard Business School (HBS) who has four priority boxes behind her desk: "As soon as possible," "Today or tomorrow," "Sometime this week," and "When I have time." One of her professor bosses calls the fourth box "Sometime this century." His comment reflects the high level of workplace stress at HBS. Randel had not been active in the union before this case began, but she decided, "For the union to work, everyone needs to participate in some way." So she got involved.

In this situation as in the other two cases, management action led to union proposals of a joint working group. An administrator announced the creation of an "office facilitator" position, whose occupant would be responsible for coordinating the work flow generated by the faculty. This work had previously been performed by the faculty secretaries themselves, in their view—and by no one, in the management's view. Some secretaries were very upset, and felt they did not need anyone else "looking over their shoulder." The level of distress was high enough that a Joint Council union member says he suggested the creation of a "working group," and invited Kathy Randel, one of the concerned secretaries, to join it.

In another case of management and union difference in perception, the Harvard manager involved tells the story somewhat differently. "We were thinking through the entire faculty services," he says. "We realized we were wasting resources all over the place, and that secretaries were a tremendous information resource. For instance, there was no budget for software programs, but each secretary ordered their own." [49] Peter Capodilupo, Chief Human Resources Officer at HBS, says the new job was proposed to help both secretaries and faculty deal with larger "thematic" issues, including more efficient service provision and secretarial career development. He said he personally realized the job needed an "open airing, so I started calling key staff people and put together a group." He notes that the Joint Council at the school was interested when he consulted its members, and that they sent representatives to the new "work group."

So both the secretaries (through their union) and managers (through their administrator) believed they were responsible for creating the group. Perhaps this is true "ownership," but most likely it represents a management decision to create the job and a union reaction to the decision, to request participation. While the manager takes credit for convening the group, it was the union's presence that ensured its existence and the bargaining unit members' participation.

This working group members reported continuing tension over its mission and the levels of "participation" it tolerated. Members first convened a meeting of all the secretaries "to hear their concerns," according to a secretary. About two-thirds of the secretaries attended. Randel felt that her co-workers reinforced what the union representatives on the work group had said —that the job was not necessary. However, managers refused to negotiate the issue of whether or not a facilitator was really needed. The Human Resources Officer describes the meeting as "mostly me presenting history, and then we talked it out. I felt like a pin cushion." Tension persisted, partly over what the right question was. The union saw the meeting as a chance for secretaries to participate, with the hope their objections would be seriously attended to--while managers saw it as a chance to explain the rationale for the proposed job. This is classic "cross-talk."

As in the previous case, the secretaries wished to preserve their individual personal relationships with faculty. "Some were worried they would be told how to do their work in some way, or this person would get in between the relationship between the faculty and the secretary," said one. The manager agrees that secretaries liked "the direct interaction with faculty members" best about their jobs. Several HBS faculty declined the invitation to participate in the work group, which could suggest they place less importance than clericals on these relationships —or more importance on other demands on their time.

The committee created a feeling of genuine participation in the job definition and hiring, according to Randel. "We worked a lot on the wording of the job description," she said. "We processed this thing to death," said the HR manger. "It was a great process." The resulting job description emphasized that the new facilitator would serve more as a "resource" or a "consultant" to the secretaries than as a supervisor. However, managers determined unilaterally that the position was "exempt" and therefore out of the bargaining unit. [50]

An unusual level of participation in the hiring process was made possible by the Working Group, according to HR chief Capodilupo. The committee members, including three union members, screened resumés and interviewed candidates for the job. Perhaps surprisingly, everyone agreed on the best candidate for the newly negotiated job description. In the end, the person hired was a respected member of the bargaining unit, so most people were satisfied. The position generated some conflict post-implementation, but much less than would have occurred without the involvement of the secretaries, according to union and management observers.

Manager Peter Capodilupo feels positively about employee and union involvement. He believes the union generally "has meant a change for the better, " and that it "has led to people thinking more creatively about workplace issues," partly because management can better hear the voices of workers "through the focal point of the union." [51] He clearly believes that employee involvement strengthens the acceptance of any change process, whether a building move or a new job. "I have every right to post this job, but I can't make this work all by myself," he said. Yet he also said that people only "tweaked" the job description. Despite the extensive process of "participation" and consultation, it seems that few substantive changes could have been made in the basic idea of creating this job. It was already decided. [52]

Some union members are uneasy about the depth of participation they have been "allowed" to have. One faculty secretary says: "Well, I think if the union or the workers are to be included in management discussions, I'd like to see them included in the WHOLE discussion. Otherwise, it feels more like lip service. It looks good, but the underlying issues are not addressed. Our effectiveness was limited once we were just looking at how to define the position."

The future is unclear. One secretary said, "The trust is shaky. I still don't trust that we will not end up with a secretarial pool and three supervisors sometime in the future." The manager involved says management does not want a typing pool, but wants to "enhance the relationship" with faculty. [53]. A lesson of the last two stories is that the direct faculty-secretary relationship is a source of power and influence for clericals, one they will fight to defend.

This case raises the question of whether the union is challenging management and faculty prerogatives sufficiently through joint committees and working groups. Some workers strongly felt that management had the right to create the job, and the Joint Working Group was the best chance to address their concerns. But in a contract without a "management rights" clause, should the union workers have questioned more persistently the basis for this job? The legal framework of labor-management relations does not encourage this. [54] Or, since it was defined as an exempt position, are they powerless to prevent its creation and limited to playing as large a role in its execution as possible? Members are divided on this question, but it raises the limits of "participation" as a strategy when management chooses not to allow participation in basic decisions.

Part Four

Assessing Participation as a Strategy for Clerical Workers

Participation by employees concerning workplace issues which affect them is desirable for the university community. There should be employee participation within each school or administrative department.
- Harvard University-HUCTW Contract, 1993

Officially, both sides say Joint Councils work well, that they provide a place for employee input and involvement. "They are useful structures. They keep the lines of communication open at the local supervisor and union level," says Lianne Sullivan, Assistant Director of Labor Relations at Harvard. Union leaders note that the number of councils has proliferated, by mutual agreement, from 22 at the time of the first contract to 42 in 1994. In some areas, the union considers genuine joint work and participation to be underway—often in smaller sub-groups or Councils. In other places, little is happening, to the great frustration for union leaders and members. "Harvard doesn't know what jointness is. Some managers still think the union wants to consult on the color of the chairs," says HUCTW organizer Kris Rondeau. "Others have built real relationships... The Joint Councils with faculty on them work, and those with only administrators do not work. The faculty bring a different view, they are more curious and unafraid, and they can strengthen the administrators, who most often want to do nothing." [55] A Harvard labor relations representative disagrees. "You have to look at each case. It's the people involved, the title is not as important. They need to be good listeners, open and interested in hearing other points of view." [56]

Faculty can make a positive difference to workers, not because they are necessarily better listeners, but because they are structurally positioned to make different contributions and decisions, especially those which affect the relational and invisible work of many clericals. Some administrators can work well with workers, but they appear to have different constraints than faculty, and as a group are not focused on transforming "participation" to "jointness."

The examples reported above are unique in their details, the specific players, and their institutional settings within Harvard. While they cannot begin to represent all the joint decision-making which occurs between Harvard managers and clerical workers, they represent specific realities of this unusual collective bargaining agreement. What limits the effectiveness of joint councils? Should more independent union action like the "public service" training sessions be expected? Will adversarial unionism succeed collaboration if managers persist in limiting participation? The following section outlines constraints and opportunities to achieve greater clerical participation, visibility, and equality.

One constraint and opportunity is the university's structure, including the lack of an effective university-wide coordinating body. Each school and major department has its own Human Resource program. Sharing successes and suggestions for joint action is far more difficult for the university than the union, which regularly schedules university-wide meetings of activists and keeps information flowing across what unionists see as administrative Berlin Walls. "The union is incredible, the network they have," says one manager. "The only university-wide approach we have as a university is the contract, and that's set up to be about local issues." Assistant Director of Labor Relations Sullivan asserts the university does have a unified approach, but it is decentralized so schools will have flexibility. "Every six months or so the university pulls together the management Joint Council chairs, to connect them. They themselves asked for it." [57]

The union also feels the university leadership has sent mixed signals. While President Neil Rudenstine endorsed the Joint Councils in principle as part of the "innovative and unique" relationship with the union, each school determines its own program and level of commitment to "jointness." The union perceives there is no strong high level advocate of joint labor-management cooperation on the university side since Professor Emeritus John Dunlop's resignation as chief negotiator several years ago. [58] Labor relations manager Sullivan disagrees; she says she still "believes in problem-solving, not positional bargaining."

Harvard managers also have little experience with anything approaching HUCTW's assertive insistence on "partnership" and participation. Harvard's seven other smaller, blue-collar, culinary and police unions are more traditional in their approach. Harvard has never seen anything like HUCTW, which creates its agenda as it goes along in an inclusive and participatory spirit quite different from Harvard's hierarchical culture. Speaking of Harvard management, mediator James Healy said, "I don't think they have enough awareness of what goes on in the world to realize what an extraordinary value they have in a relationship like this." [59]

Finally, the university may have no single agenda for its clerical workers which everyone supports—ironically, perhaps, because of the very invisibility and devaluing of their work. Some administrators are most interested in more "efficient" and "productive" work settings, while others are trying to detach faculty secretaries and assistants from their personal relationships with faculty members. The university has at least two managerial faces, one professorial and one administrative—and the interests of the various internal players are not the same. Professors develop individual relationships with their support staff, over time, and come to depend on their specific knowledge of the professors' work. Taking away a personal assistant and assigning a "pool" of clerical workers to a faculty member would likely encounter some internal faculty resistance.

The union, too, confronts institutional barriers to making the Joint Councils work well to meet its goals. Most fundamental is the need to "raise member expectations," as one union leader put it. "Remember these are not people who are accustomed to having a lot of power in their lives," said Bill Jaeger. "Sometimes we have to help them see what they are entitled to." Carrie Normand, a former Harvard secretary and Joint Council member now working for HUCTW, points to the gender dynamic as a basic organizing challenge:

.... You have to believe your experience is legitimate, like when you need help, or when a policy needs changing because the same problems keep occurring. A lot of people, especially women, have no sense that they can do that. We call it self-representation. [60]

Union organizers' work includes helping people take seriously their own concerns about work, and pointing out organizational issues which need to be addressed. Many employees do not make the direct connection between working conditions and the quality of the work they produce, as in this hygienist's statement:

"We felt it (the shorter appointment) was not fair to the patient, not to mention that it was not fair to us too or the extra stress we would feel. But mostly we felt it was not fair to the patient, that they would not get as good quality care. [61]

She is separating patient care and working conditions which are clearly interrelated.

The union's own limited resources may serve as another constraint on its participation, paralleling the power difference between managers and secretaries meeting in a Joint Council. Women clerical workers usually have less status, education, and even time (given family responsibilities and an average salary of $24,000) to engage in joint work than managers. Managers have the responsibility to make administrative relationships work; union members have the job of keeping their supervisors happy and getting assigned work done. If they are away from work on joint meetings too frequently, they cannot keep up with their jobs. With 42 joint councils to support as well as internal and external organizing, problem-solving, and other responsibilities, union staff are not able to devote as much time to supporting Joint Council work as they might like. Organizer Kris Rondeau admits that it is difficult to keep joint work on the "front burner," but they try:

Each Joint Council has a staff assigned, and team leader meetings, and Joint Council meetings, and special trainings, and trainings for new people. The hardest job is team leader...The union can't give too much attention to the joint councils, but they are going on, living by their values. The members help each other. The union provides opportunities for them to do that. [62]

According to one faculty assistant, who relied on the union to support her work in a joint council, the union was doing a lot: "The union never leaves you stranded. It gives us guidance. It trains you how to run a meeting, what to do when things are going wrong, how to persist if it's difficult, how to work as a group. Every meeting has a preparation meeting." [63]

The union's support of the value of decentralization at Harvard increases union members' ability to take a flexible attitude in different settings, and to encourage innovation. [64] But it makes it harder to share ideas and experiences across a wide variety of independently managed work sites. Support for decentralized management may also limit the union's ability to demand greater participation and power-sharing across many work places in the future.

The union is developing an increasingly clear philosophy of work, and the role of the worker in its active interpretive role. [65] At varying levels, union members are pushing for a conception of work as belonging to both the worker and the employer, not just to the employer. In contrast, Assistant Labor Relations Director Lianne Sullivan says, "Jobs are created because you need to get a particular function done. If you can still get the job done by showing sensitivity to the needs of the people doing the job, it's just good management to do it." [66] One activist who had been involved in the negotiating team for the first contract "what we think the workplace should look like," by comparing himself to a manager he knew. "It's just something they hadn't thought about," said Bob Mendelson, a science technician. "It's not that they were dumb. It's just something that, like myself, pre-union, they'd just go to work, get paid, and go home." Since his own union activism began, Mendelson has developed an entirely different idea about the importance of work in everyone's life, and he articulates this philosophy clearly:

It's what we call job ownership, that's really shared. The employee brings something to the job, the employer brings something to the job, and... it's up to the employee to sort of bend their skills to fit the job, but also the job can be molded to sort of fit the particular employee... This is the way it ought to be. It's certainly not the way it is here. [67]

He described a wonderful moment in his union organizing life when a management counterpart listened to this, then said, "I think it's something I've felt all along, but I haven't allowed myself to think about that for years."

Union members frequently push each other to think more creatively and expansively about work, and try to engage in a moral as well as political dialogue with managers. They are motivated strongly by their jointly developed beliefs about what a community at work should be, and re engaging in what James McGregor Burns might call "transformational leadership," trying to close the gap between values and reality. (Burns, 1976) Further, they are seeking partnership across highly charged lines of gender, class, and authority. The university context makes possible what would be far more difficult in a corporate context, but it is still an extraordinary endeavor. Union activists are trying to "give every worker the chance to participate in decisions made about her or his work life," and are attempting to create real-life examples of this to show how it improves life not just for the worker but for the employer and "customer" as well.

Some Joint Councils are working well; some are not. Creative problem-solving at the local level requires trust and hard work on both sides. Clearly, Joint Councils provide a meaningful form of participation to some workers. "It's not an official decision-making process, but it still affects things. Human beings listening to other human beings has an effect," said one secretary. "It's slow, long-term work. It takes persistence. It's better than having things happen to us. Even if it may be several years before it [a desired change] is implemented, it wouldn't happen at all otherwise." Without a union, workers would not have guaranteed participation, and no way to get necessary training and support. The focus on local initiatives gives Councils flexibility. Still, the process is painfully slow, subject to doubts on both sides about intent, seriousness, commitment, and usefulness. Workers find that encouraging signs are often followed by doubtful ones. Power imbalances create frustration in some settings. Personal qualities matter too. Some managers are "dull, angry and hostile. Others are shining lights," HUCTW's Rondeau says. The lack of consistency creates problems for everyone.

Conclusion: Participation vs. Control

I began this study of service work from an industrial relations paradigm, asking questions about the union's role in helping clerical workers gain "control" of their work. I concluded early on that HUCTW and the joint processes described here had made important but limited progress in enabling workers to wrest control of their jobs from their managers. During my two-year study, I realized that the union, in its training and organizing, and in its contract with Harvard, emphasizes exclusively "participation" and "jointness," not "control." [68] The union activists continually advocate "listening respectfully" and "persistently" to the views of others, and encourage their members to engage in "self-representation" of what is important to them. Director Bill Jaeger, when I asked him directly, said he had never been obsessed with "control," because it seems like "something which someone 'has' and which is 'taken' by someone else, it's a very male concept, it can't be shared... Yes, members want more influence, and power, and recognition... but we don't want to cut managers out. We don't have it in us to stop listening. That is a built-in, permanent starting place." [69]

While much social science and industrial relations literature is concerned with control of work, especially in manufacturing settings, I had to consider the possibility that "control" was not the primary issue for these workers—or for their union at this point. Communication, respect, and a genuine commitment to their serious inclusion and meaningful participation describe far more clearly what they are seeking, at least at Harvard. "Control" may be too simplistic a category of analysis in the clerical context. After all, the product of much of their work is a relational interaction, not a commodity. Certainly a goal of inclusion raises questions like: How much inclusion? Who includes whom? and when? What if there is no consensus? and so forth. By any standard of measurement, Harvard clerical and technical workers are far more "included" in making decisions affecting their work lives today than they were eight years ago, before their first labor agreement. Just as clearly, they have a long way to go to achieve what the union calls "jointness," or "co-ownership" of jobs, or even to have a full "partner" in making decisions which will advance the university and its workers. These mini-case studies suggest the need to push the metaphor of "participation" further, to ask the harder questions, and to raise the issues of power and control. The union's customer/public service training is beginning to do just that.

The union strategy is clearer than the university's, and HUCTW addresses issues of clerical invisibility, emotional labor, and disempowerment consistently and clearly, though in different terms. HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger says:

Employee involvement is the defining aspiration of our local union... Relieving the economic burden, while it is very important, doesn't ever give a member of the union the feeling of progress in her soul and real improvement in her life, of having really gained something, in the same way that a rich, interesting successful participation in some sort of process does where power is shared in a new way.

The union's role is especially important in a clerical or service setting , because workers on their own may not have the experience, the shared knowledge, or the support they need to challenge their exclusion, as Jaeger points out.

Almost every working person has the impulse that more participation is good. It feels better to be involved in planning and creative work and redesigning or defining work systems than to have it happen to you. It feels bad to have people tell you how things should be where you are the expert. People have the impulse, yes... but the idea that we can act on it, and the confidence that it's worth it to jump into it, have to be organized around and developed in people. We have to show them good examples. We have to prepare extensively, encourage people, and build meaningful personal connections. A lot of working people have the impulse but have enough fear and nervousness not to act on it, ever. (Jaeger, 1993)

In sum, many kinds and levels of worker control over and participation in work are possible, ranging from simple resistance to formal sharing or ceding of decisions between management and employees. (Kochan and Osterman, 1994; Applebaum and Batt, 1994) Clerical workers, like all workers, have some power over how they perform their work—but much of their power lies in their ability to affect and negotiate the relationships which are the daily currency of their work. The efforts of the union and some managers have helped Joint Councils function with "episodic" jointness, providing valuable contributions to to running the university. "The secretaries are a tremendous information resource," said one manager. The effort needed to achieve small agreements may seem large in proportion to the issues resolved, but I argue in these cases that mutual understanding and respect have increased in ways that are difficult to measure precisely. However, without strong coherent leadership from top managers at each of Harvard's schools, the opportunities for joint work can become frustrating experiences which alienate rather than engage workers.

The potential for gain is high, but the risk of doing little or nothing is great, for the union is developing a cohesive philosophy of work which is not currently matched by management's efforts. The next years will tell whether the larger and deeper questions can begin to be addressed through Joint Councils and their spin-offs—and whether all union members will prove to be as patient, constructive, and optimistic as some described here. Whatever else it is or is not,"jointness" is a dialectical relationship; both managers and workers change and develop through the process of listening to each other and renegotiating their relationships.

Harvard management could make better use of this union's initiative and interest. As John Dunlop said, "The union permits a conscientious management to get things done faster and more effectively than it could on its own." [70] Some managers have the leeway to seek union or worker involvement, and choose to do so. [71] Innovative managers could develop measures of performance that incorporate worker perspectives on the services being provided. When managers do not take joint efforts seriously, they can do more harm than good, generating anger, cynicism, and eventually poor service.

Unions which re-negotiate relationships, not just wages and benefits, have great potential to address issues of concern to women and clerical workers. The U.S. labor movement's future could change if unions' organized the 13 million unorganized private sector clerical workers (Hurd, 1993, Eaton, 1993a). To succeed at this task, unions can become advocates of issues raised by members themselves, as HUCTW has done successfully by renegotiating relationships at work. The emotional labor performed by most clerical and technical workers is largely unrecognized and invisible, and generally is not valued highly or explicitly by employers. But "keeping everyone happy" is frequently impossible, and can create unbearable stress on workers. Unions can play an invaluable role in helping workers set boundaries around their abilities to satisfy everyone, thereby creating a more equitable and mutually honest relationship with employers, supervisors, and "help-seekers." Much of the "hidden conflict in organizations" (Kolb and Bartunek, 1992) could be engaged constructively through more effective self-representation of clerical workers; this conflict should not be the workers' burden to carry.

Future experience will tell if Bill Jaeger is correct when he suggests that "The potential is unlimited. We haven't found a case yet where there is too much participation. Every added increment of employee involvement is a good thing, and —we haven't found the limit yet." Although "participation" is often an unsatisfactory description of worker relations with managers, scholars need to analyze what "participation" means in each case. If everyone enjoys the "Desert Island" exercise in the joint orientation, but nothing changes back at the office, the union can take this promising strategy and push it further, both with members and the employers. One could start by asking clerical and other service sector workers if they have the chance to participate as much as they would like, and how they would do things differently if they were managing their own work. Without more sustained, creative representation efforts of this kind, workers' full potential will not be developed, and "women's work" in clerical, technical, and administrative jobs will continue to be devalued.

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Comments are welcome and may be sent to:
Susan Eaton
MIT Sloan School of Management
50 Memorial Drive, E52-532
Cambridge, MA. 02142.