Observer, Volume 16, Number 18, Thursday May 25 1995

Letter


Remembering OCOPE's beginning

To the editor:

I read with interest [communications staff writer] Betty Gabrielli's article about OCOPE [Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees] in the 27 April Observer. I was pleased to see that she listed as one of the founders my late wife, Adele Gittler.

I also had a part in OCOPE's beginning. When the founding committee began to enter into negotiations as a union with the college, they were as green about negotiations as could be. Adele suggested to the group that I assist them, as I had considerable experience with union negotiations in industry, albeit from the management side.

For months, we met regularly in house director Lucy Kapuscinsky's apartment in Dascomb, and we discussed strategy. They would ask me if they could ask for this or that in the contract. I would tell them that they could ask for anything, but what they would get would be another matter. Committee members learned to make demands that they knew they wouldn't get and then drop demand A if they got demand B. I take great pride in having taught them the ins and outs of negotiations.

At one point in the negotiations the college (in the person of assistant to the president Stan Ornstein) offered an employees' handbook rather than a contract. The committee asked me what to do. I told them that the next time the college made that offer, they should fold their papers and, as a group, stand up and tell the college to call them when it was ready to bargain in good faith. I told them that the college would eventually call them back to negoitate a contract.

And that is exactly what happened. With some trepidation, they walked out, and a half hour later [President] Bob Fuller himself called and asked them to come back. That sort of strengthened my hand as an advisor.

The group wanted a job-evaluation plan, and we got that condition into the contract. Shortly after that Stan Ornstein, knowing nothing of my meetings with the committee, asked me if I knew a consultant whom the college could hire to design and install a job-evaluation plan.

I told the OCOPE committee that I could recommend myself as a consultant, but if I went to work for the college I would have to break off my relationship with them. They agreed that that would be a good idea.

A few days later while having lunch with Stan, I asked him if he knew who had been the advisor to OCOPE in the negotiations. He didn't. When I told him that it was I, he literally dropped his fork. We talked at length, and he and the college agreed to hire me as their consultant.

After that, Stan, personnel officer Richard Marshall, and I, with the help of supervisors and employees, wrote the job descriptions and evaluated each of the jobs. From there I worked up a wage curve and labor grades. The plan worked for at least a year.

-Harvey Gittler
Affiliate scholar

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