Laboring Against Mass Hall

In the late afternoon of May 1, a group of about 75 people chanted as they marched along Memorial Drive, up Plympton St., on to Massachusetts Ave. Spreading out along the perimeter of the Yard, the activists clamoured about the iron gates, attempting to gain entry onto Harvard's property.

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, University police locked the Yard up tight, prohibiting entry or exit. Police described the activists as "outsiders" and refused to allow them to "trespass."

Meanwhile, 10 other "outside" activists avoided the center of the action and slipped into Holyoke Center, Harvard's 10-story administrative complex. They staged a six-hour sit-in in the planning office of the 350th celebration, exiting just after 11:00 p.m. into the arms of fellow protesters and into the spotlights of three local television stations.

The demonstration received more attention than any other this year. But it was not organized by the traditional opponents of Harvard's South Africa investments policy; the march and sit-in were orchestrated by Domenic M. Bozzotto, the president of the Boston-based union responsible for Harvard's dining hall workers.

That day and into the night, Bozzotto pranced around the Holyoke Center courtyard in his Local 26 jacket as if he were Lenin himself. He appeared on television screens and in newspapers across the Boston area, bashing Harvard and Shell Oil for their connections to South Africa. His unconventional methods surprised some in the Harvard community, angered others and bewildered most.

Bozzotto has been around for about five years, but this year marked one of his most visible. He was behind much of the upheaval at the Faculty Club, where his workers protested against new outside managers and what they called unfair overtime practices. Threatening strikes and causing several scenes inside the building itself during the school year, Bozzotto rocked the traditionally sophisticated and removed air of the club with real-world concerns.

During one incident earlier this spring, one of Bozzotto's union activists refused to leave the club's kitchen until Harvard officials agreed to negotiate on a labor dispute. The workers this union leader represents were so incited that one employee described the Faculty Club as utterly repressive. "It's like Poland. It's just hell. It's like Solidarity."

Solidarity is exactly the image he is trying to forge. Combining social issues with union issues, Bozzotto attempted, with some success, to form an alliance with students, an alliance he hopes will exert more force on a stubborn Harvard management than unionism alone. His foray into the divestment world and into the media spotlight were calculated manuevers to gain the support of student and faculty activists, observers speculate. Thus, Bozzotto has pushed the union movement, with mixed success from an isolated facet of the Harvard experience into mainstream anti-Harvard administration.

Stealing Ice Cream

Bozzotto began his labor career as a waterboy in a Boston hotel at age 13. He and his buddies stole ice cream from hotel freezers at night to give them energy to wash dishes. Now, 35 years later, Bozzotto runs the hotel and restaurant workers union. But he still eats ice cream to give him energy: three banana splits every day.

Since his election in 1981, Bozzotto has transformed the relatively passive Local 26--which represents all of Harvard's dining hall workers, as well as the Faculty Club cooks and waitresses--into an active entity, aware of their rights as members of the community, says Eugene Bruskin, who heads the Boston-based Massachusetts Labor Support Project.

Throughout this year and his term as Local 26 president, job security has been the central issue facing labor at Harvard, says Bozzotto. In order to run its eating establishments more efficiently, Harvard has in the past two years contracted out both the Faculty Club and Kresge Hall, the Business School dining hall. The change in management has threatened jobs in both places, and the union will attempt to revise the contract so as to assure jobs and the continuation of Harvard benefits to workers after a change in management.

Faculty Club Disputes

This year a series of labor disputes developed while the Faculty Club was under the management of Creative Gourmet, a private catering firm. The union and some workers charged that Creative Gourmet brought in outside employees to replace regular workers who would normally be paid overtime rates for that time.

After a narrowly-averted strike in April, the University terminated its contract with the management firm, but the labor disputes will not be resolved until the new contract is signed June 18.

Marriott Hotels currently manages the Business School dining hall. Bozzotto wants to negotiate a contract containing a grandfather clause guaranteeing continued Harvard benefits for long-term workers.

In addition, the union leadership will demand wage increases and "more professional administration of the dining halls," says Bozzotto. "Right now, the management of the dining halls has no rhyme or reason, and we want a consistent program for all the dining halls, not dependent on the personality of the individual managers."

But this year Bozzotto seemed more concerned with laying the groundwork for more effective lobbying on behalf of worker concerns than with actually achieving his many demands.

The union's strong demands reflect "a nationwide grass roots labor movement to fight concessions by the workers," says Bozzotto. "The labor movement has to be strengthened in response to the rampant lay-offs across the country," he adds. "Concessions won't save jobs anymore."

Bozzotto's leadership reflects a nationwide trend in labor away from the traditionally isolated union organization, Bruskin says. "Domenic believes that the labor movement shouldn't exist as an isolated movement that doesn't care about anything but more money for its members. It has a role to play for social justice, and to do this, its leaders must build a labor-community relationship."

The Man and His Philosophy

Bozzotto says his leadership is based on "a philosophy, that there is more to a union than wages, benefits and job security, it has to have a heart and soul, it has to have social responsibility." To expand the workers' role in the community, Bozzotto gathers support from students to back him in negotations. "Dining hall workers have built up a relationship with students, and this gives them an identification with the Harvard community," said Bozzotto.

In return, workers have voiced their support of issues concerning students, such as divestment from companies with investments in South Africa, and opposition to federal aid for the Contras.

Student activists have developed a sense of "cooperation with the local unions," says Harvard divestment activist Damon A. Silvers '86. Silvers and other Harvard students demonstrated their support of Local 26 three years ago, when the union held a strike over Harvard's refusal to extend contract negotiations. Late last month, Silvers and Richard Drayton '86 attended the opening negotiations for the Local 26 new contract, but were thrown out.

Harvard's Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) this spring sent representatives to the Boston Labor Committee for a Free South Africa. This was one reason the unions decided to make the South Africa issue the focus of the May Day campaign at Harvard.

Union Grandstander?

Bozzotto has been criticized for neglecting concrete union needs in favor of broader issues. "Bozzotto should spend more time as a union business manager than as a demonstrator," says one dining hall manager, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Edward W. Powers, Harvard's associate general counsel for employee relations, says he disapproves of Bozzotto's tactics as a union leader, and that he is "offended that Domenic arranged a sit-in as though he was a member of the Harvard community."

"The sit-in was billed as Harvard service workers supporting divestment, and I saw one Harvard employee participating," says Powers. "When he's out there saying its Local 26, I'm not sure if he's in tune with his membership."

Workers say they generally support Bozzotto, although with reservations. "I'm wary of him, but I support him. He does right by us," says Ronnie E. Blackman, a shop steward at the Business School Kresge dining hall.

Workers approve of Bozzotto's participation in student activities, says a waitress at the Faculty Club. "We need student support. Harvard cares what students and alumni say a lot more than they care about us," Blackman adds.

According to several workers who did not wish to be identified, animosity towards Bozzotto built up during the 1981 contract negotiations when "he did some dealing behind closed doors in the last contract negotiations," says a waitress at Kresge Hall.

"He had a private meeting with Powers after we brought in the negotiating committee, but we got what we were asking for," says Blackman. Another waitress criticized Bozzotto for not visiting the dining halls enough. "He likes the media and the publicity, more than the day-to-day stuff," she says.

Powers criticized Bozzotto for his confrontational, dramatic tactics, which contain, according to Powers, more personal antagonism than professionalism. "Three years ago, Domenic disrupted my home and stuffed my mailbox with flyers. I found that offensive," Powers says.

Powers also says that Bozzotto fails to distinguish between valid and invalid workers' problems, and fights for anyone who complains. "We've had more arbitration with Local 26 than with all the other unions combined," he says. "Because of his ideological orientation, he sees management as the enemy instead of another person, and he refuses to compromise."