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Introduction: Good Things Come to Those Who Negotiate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2010
Extract
On May 15, 2008, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) held its twentieth birthday celebration at the Agassiz Theatre in Radcliffe Yard. I was next door at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, sleepily perusing my next fat folder of government documents. As the laughter and singing wafted its way across the quad, the choice of whether to stay or go was clear. I followed the trail of balloons to the theater, grabbed my complimentary union tote bag, smiled at all the lovingly crafted refreshments that awaited the revelers, and squeezed into a tiny space in the front as the lights went down. Long familiar with the upbeat and bold spirit of the union, I was still caught off guard when the lights came back up. Seated a few feet from me on the stage was a 1940s femme fatale who began to belt out “A Union Is a Girl's Best Friend.”
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- Report from the Field: Bread and Roses Unionism at Harvard
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- Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010
References
Notes
1. Cobble, Dorothy Sue, “A ‘Tiger by the Toenail’: The 1970 s Origins of the New Working-Class Majority,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2 (2005): 103–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: How Home Health Workers Changed the Face of Labor (Oxford, forthcoming).
2. Hoerr, John, We Can't Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard (Philadelphia, 1998)Google Scholar; HUCTW, “Top 20 Accomplishments, May 17, 1988–May 17, 2008,” flyer from the Twentieth Birthday Celebration, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in author's possession.
3. Savage, Lydia, “Changing Work, Changing People: A Conversation with Union Organizers at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center,” in The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor, ed. Cobble, Dorothy Sue (Ithaca, 2007), 119–139Google Scholar.
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5. Savage, “Changing Work, Changing People,” 122.
6. Rondeau, Kris and Smith, Janna Malamud, “Unions' New Role in the Workplace,” Boston Globe, August 30, 2008Google Scholar.
7. Savage, “Changing Work, Changing People.” For more on HUCTW beliefs and practices, see Putnam, Robert and Feldstein, Lewis, “The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers: ‘The Whole Social Thing,’” in Better Together: Restoring the American Community, ed. Putnam, Robert et al. (New York, 2003), 166–185Google Scholar; Eaton, Susan, “‘The Customer Is Always Interesting’: Unionized Harvard Clericals Renegotiate Work Relationships,” in Working in the Service Society, ed. MacDonald, Cameron and Sirianni, Carmen (Philadelphia, 1996), 291–332Google Scholar; Dorothy Sue Cobble, “More Intimate Unions,” in Intimate Labors: Care, Sex, and Domestic Work, ed. Rhacel Parrenas and Eileen Boris (Stanford, forthcoming).
8. For a survey of the literature, dividing it into “social movement” unionism versus “mutual gains” unionism, Nissen, Bruce, “Alternative Strategic Directions for the U.S. Labor Movement: Recent Scholarship,” Labor Studies Journal 28 (2003): 133–155Google Scholar. For a call to move beyond dichotomous categories, Heery, Ed, “Partnership versus Organizing: Alternative Futures for British Trade Unionism,” Industrial Relations Journal 33 (2002), 20–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9. Hurd, Richard W., “Organizing and Representing Clerical Workers: The Harvard Model,” in Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership, ed. Cobble, Dorothy Sue (Ithaca, 1993), 316–336Google Scholar; Cobble, Dorothy Sue, “The Prospects for Unionism in a Service Society,” in Working in the Service Society, ed. Macdonald, Cameron and Sirianni, Carmen (Philadelphia, 1996), 333–358Google Scholar.
10. In addition to the publications cited earlier, see Green, James, “Union Victory: An Interview with Kristine Rondeau,” Democratic Left (September–October 1988): 4–6Google Scholar; Oppenheim, Lisa, “Women's Ways of Organizing: A Conversation with AFSCME Organizers Kris Rondeau and Gladys McKenzie,” Labor Research Review 18 (1991): 45–60Google Scholar; Savage, Lydia, “Geographies of Organizing: Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles,” in Organizing the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, ed. Herod, Andrew (Minneapolis, 1998), 225–252Google Scholar; Clawson, Dan, The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movement (Ithaca, 2003)Google Scholar.