We Can't Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard

Hoerr explores a different kind of unionism in We Can’t Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard (Temple University Press, 1997). This is the inside story of a 15-year struggle by a small group of women (and some men) to form a union representing a largely female staff of 3,500 office and laboratory workers at Harvard University. Despite the fierce opposition of university administrators, the staff workers successfully rebelled against decades of exploitative management polices that denied clerical workers respect and decent wages. Growing out of the women’s movement of the early 1970s, the Harvard Union of Clerical & Technical Workers (HUCTW) developed innovative methods of organizing and representing workers based on the values and priorities of working women. The organizers also broke away from the tradition-bound rules and policies of mainstream unions. Telling the story in narrative form, Hoerr dips “right into the middle of the daily work lives of the university’s employees,” wrote columnist Bill McKibben in The Nation. He added: “Among other things, it’s the most interesting story about feminism that I’ve read in years—about the particular fears and interests of women workers, about the joy and openness that these mostly female organizers brought to their task, and about the fits they caused the cigar chompers elsewhere in the [labor] movement.” “The Land of the Cubicles,” The Nation, October 20, 1997.

OTHER REVIEWS
“This is a superb piece of investigative journalism, based on extensive research, including interviews with many of the key participants on both the union and management sides, as well as a wide variety of written documents. This book is readable and the story compelling… it provides a richly detailed account of an important episode in the late 20th century women’s labor history.” Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology, UCLA, Labor History, Vol. 40, No. 1, February 1999.

“Hoerr’s book breaks new ground as it traces how the rising feminist consciousness of the ‘60s and early ‘70s fused with working-class, union sensibilities, and how [Kris] Rondeau and other organizers made mainstream unions bend to accommodate this new mix. Given what he calls ‘unrestricted access’ to union files and proceedings, Hoerr nonetheless looks behind the day-to-day strategic meetings and sees something revolutionary taking shape: in ‘90s terms, a network.” Ellen Clegg, “Revolution at Harvard: Female Workers Unite,” The Boston Globe, August 14, 1997.

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