It might not be the answer you're looking for, but both MS Word and OO have the ability to save a document as RTF, which can be read via RTF::Parser. A quick google search will reveal some batch converters, which may or may not be of any real use.

And I know this *really* isn't the answer you're looking for, but the source of open office might be modular enough so that you could have perl invoke it to do the job.