Linen Firm Distributors Take Pay Cut

The students who deliver for the Gordon Linen Service last night reached agreement with the directors of the Harvard Student Agencies over a pay cut they received several weeks ago.

At the beginning of the year, the delivery boys received five cents a bundle, but this rate would have put both the linen service and the entire H.S.A. in the red. Thus, the wage was cut to four cents a bundle, incurring dissatisfaction on the part of some of the workers.

In a meeting last night, however, the workers were for the first time informed of the budget miscalculation that had given them the five-cent rate, and a majority of them agreed that it would be unfortunate if their salaries resulted in losses for the H.S.A.

One of the deliverers indicated that even with the reduced wage, they are receiving at least 20 cents an hour more than they did last year. He emphasized that the H.S.A. needs a small profit each year to enable it to start new enterprises, thus creating work for a greater number of undergraduates.

"Somebody was overly optimistic," he commented, but the error was soon realized. He said that since the delivery boys are now able to do their work faster than at the beginning of the year, the reduction in wages was reasonable and not unfair, especially in the light of the financial difficulty.

He characterized the mistake as "the result of a young organization's learning how to take care of itself," and added that "everyone working for the H.S.A. has benefited from it and wants to continue working."