Union Approves New University Offer of 8.3% to Kitchen Workers

Two hundred and fifty dining hall workers voted overwhelmingly last night to avert a strike and accept a piece-meal wage formula offered in confidence by the University on Friday. A new contract for 460 union members is expected by the end of the week.

The settlement -- averaging 8.3 per cent for ten separate work classifications--falls short of the union's initial demands for a flat ten per cent increase, but represents a sizable improvement over the University's opening bid of six per cent.

Significant dissention, however, was voiced by butchers, second cooks, and vegetable cooks, who received the lowest percentage increases--six, six and seven per cent respectively. Part-time general service workers benefitted most--with an additional eleven per cent--as the University moved to bring its wage scales for kitchen help in line with those at M.I.T.

"But I want to know why we got only six per cent when others got as much as nine and a half and eleven per cent," one butcher said.

"They (the University) can't afford to let us strike," a vegetable cook maintained. "That's why I say let's strike if we don't all get a flat ten per cent," he exclaimed vehemently.

This small minority of dissenters, however, was voted down by a show of hands. Union members, mostly women kitchen workers, accepted the University's latest offer but empowered business agent Joseph Stefani to bargain further for the butchers before signing a new contract.

"It wasn't necessary to call a strike for that little difference for the butchers," Stefani said after the meeting.

Stefani also indicated that the University was considering a general welfare plan for all its employees, whether or not they are unionized.