AF of L Threatens Life Of Local College Union

Because University workers are "disgusted with the high-handed manner" of their independent union, the American Federation of Labor will try to form a Harvard local this Friday evening.

A.F.L. has called a mass meeting of service and maintenance workers at 8 p.m. in the Hotel Commander. The meeting, it said last night, was "at the request of scores of University employees, tired of the growing friction and disunity within their own ranks."

For the last 14 years, manual laborers have been under the Harvard University Employees Representative Association, headed by Daniel G. Mulvihill.

An A.F.L. spokesman charged yesterday that "H.U.E.R.A. is a company union, and company unions are illegal," and that "Mulvihill is leading them in a dictatorial manner."

According to Edward T. Sullivan, secretary-treasurer of A.F.L.'s Central Labor Union of Cambridge, "workers are not getting the proper representation. They are disgusted with the secrecy surrounding their relations with the University."

Early this term there was a short-lived protest movement against Mulvihill's re-election, and several workers circulated petitions to leave the H.U.E.R.A. Sullivan said that two of the biggest gripes are seniority and grievance procedure.

His Local 254 now represents workers at M.I.T., Tufts, Jackson, Simmons, and Radcliffe, he said, and counts more than 1,000 members.

"We don't know exactly what the setup is here now," Sullivan said, "but we hope to find out and state our own ideas at the meeting. It has been called to unite A.F.L. sympathizers spread throughout the University and lay plans to bring all Harvard workers under the American Federation of Labor banner."

The mass conclave will be open to "everyone who wants to come," he explained.