Power Plant Stalls Again

As if the Harvard officials in charge of the Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP) didn't have enough problems, the workers who run the plant went on strike this week.

It happened suddenly Saturday afternoon, when four months of negotiations finally broke down and the 57 engineers and assistants who run the giant $230 million facility walked off their jobs.

The strikers charged the Medical Area Services Corporation (MASCO)--the company which runs the plant on contract for Harvard--with going back on its promise of higher wages and regular work schedules.

MASCO officials barely had time to deny the strikers' charges before the plant--which supplies steam, chilled water and electricity to 13 hospitals and Med School buildings--lost power Saturday night and emergency systems had to be switched.

The rest of the week saw the workers, members of Local 877 of the Internation Union of Operating Engineers, continually picket the plant and succeed in blocking all but one oil shipment to it.

Only under the cover of several squad cars and a battery of policemen could a shipment of 15,000 gallons get through on Thursday. MASCO president Steven A. Tritman said his company only wanted to prevent injuries to the strikers, who lined the Francis St. side of the plant and threatened to lie down in front of the oil trucks.

Although the plant has stockpiled enough oil to last for at least 65 days--more than 400,000 gallons, according to one union source--some officials were reported to be worried about the long-term effect the strike might have.

The plant has already cost Harvard about $200 million more than it originally wanted to spend, and the University is still awaiting state approval to install the electricity-generating diesel engines it needs to make MATEP cost- and energy-efficient.

The strike by Local 877 centered on what some union members called a MASCO promise to include regular work scheduled in any contract--a "promise" which MASCO officials said they left open to debate, rather than left out, in their final offer.

But the final offer, a one-year contract with a 10-per-cent wage hike, wasn't good enough for the workers, who countered with a proposal for a gradual transition to regular work schedules and a two-year contract with wage hikes of 15 and 12 per cent.

"The bottom line is the work schedules," said one union member, "and the money."

As for MASCO, it was primarily concerned with getting the construction workers who are completing work on MATEP into the plant--an idea the strikers didn't like.

And when contract negotiations resumed yesterday, the two sides seemed even further apart than they were a week ago.