Labor's New Mood on Campus

A series of remarkable events in the Harvard chapter of the Cooks and Pastry Cooks Association led this week to the dining hall workers' union ratifying a raise that is...well, huge.

The workers got a one-year contract with a 50-cents-an-hour across the board pay raise. The raise means 17.2 per cent more pay for the lowest-paid dining hall workers, and 10.5 per cent for the highest-paid. The workers at the ratification meeting this week greeted the new contract with a standing ovation.

Most of the credit for the contract is going to Alan Balsam, a young shop steward in the Winthrop House dining hall who organized the then non-union Brandeis kitchens before he came to Harvard.

Balsam has quickly risen through the union ranks here, and when his fellow union members gave him a check for $175 in appreciation this week he called it "the greatest moment of my life."

The raise seems to have gone through because of a combination of factors--the kitchen workers' now-low pay, the union's strong unity, and a carefully planned set of contract demands, most of which went through virtually unchanged.