University to Raise Its Pay Increase Plan

A compromise wage increase was offered yesterday to 460 University dining hall employees who threatened to strike last week in their bid for a favorable contract.

The University, in a closed bargaining session with the A.F.L. Cooks and Pastry Cooks Union, raised its initial offer of a six percent across-the-board increase to a flat ten-cent hourly raise. Both proposals would be retroactive to the beginning of the academic year.

Union officials, reportedly dissatisfied with the new University offer, will refer the ten-cent raise to its membership on Monday night. Earlier, the Union local voted unanimously to strike unless it received a ten per cent pay hike.

"Don't Want to Strike"

"We definitely don't want to strike," Joseph Stefani, business representative of Local 186 said last night, "but we will if only as a last resort."

He indicated, however, that while he was disappointed in the current offer the union might be induced to settle short of its demand for a flat ten percent raise.

"Harvard might not go right up to ten per cent," he said, "but as long as they keep budging, my exerience is that they'll come across."

The current offer was interpreted as a concession to less skilled workers rather than employees on higher wage scales.

A ten-cent raise for a general service employee, currently receiving $1.04 hourly under the old contract, would be much nearer the union's demand than a similar increase for a $1.94-an-hour second cook.

Yesterday's meeting, held in the University Personnel Office on Massachusetts Avenue, was attended by an eight-man committee for the Union and John W. Teele, personnel director; William A. Heaman, Manager of Dining Halls; and Nicholai F. Wessel, Associate Director of the Office of Personnel.

The two-hour bargaining session was characterized by Heaman as "very friendly." He added that, "so far there has been no official mention in our discussions of a possible strike.