Dining Hall Workers Protest Lack of Summer Employment

Harvard Dining Services workers who rely on the University for summer employment will this year be laid off for the three vacation months, union officials said.

The workers are circulating a petition requesting that the administration continue to provide them with summer employment.

Most Harvard dining halls are closed during the summer. But Eddie B. Childs, who is co-chief union steward for the College's dining workers, charges that until this year, the University had agreed to employ dining hall workers in maintenance jobs during the summer months.

Childs says Harvard dining services workers are not eligible for unemployment benefits because of a clause in the compensation law, and thus will have no income for the summer break period. The clause exempts educational institutions from having to pay such benefits, Childs says.

Childs, a cook in Adams House, says Harvard has no hired private contractors for tasks usually assigned to dining hall workers in the summer. He calls this practice "unfair."

"Laid-off workers are typically transferred to other duties like custodial or ground maintenance jobs," Childs says. "This year, those jobs are not going to be offered because the administration has either contracted them out privately or eliminated them through attrition."

Officials in Harvard's office of labor relations could not be reached for comment on the situation.

But Leonard D. Condenzio, Harvard's associate director for board operations and catering, says there has been no change from policies of the past.

"There has been no change from what we have done with our workers for the summer," Condenzio says, "We do not offer the jobs ourselves, but rather we let other departments know we have workers available for summer employment."

Condenzio says his office has no control over how much other departments on campus allot for maintenance jobs. He says all he can do is notify departments that culinary workers are available and want to work.

"We assist other departments in finding jobs," Condenzio says. "We never guaranteed these jobs for our workers."

But Childs alleges that the administration is deliberately targeting the dining hall workers for lay-offs as part of an overall cost-cutting plan.

"Upper management is playing a shell game," Childs says. "Dining services can say they haven't any jobs because departments aren't requesting anyone. Just because the number of students goes down, [that] doesn't mean the amount of maintenance does."

Condenzio says, however, that dining services is doing its best to help its workers find summer employment.

"It is in our interest to have a stable, trained staff, but obviously, we cannot keep all our employees for the summer," he says.

"We have advertised that our workers are available for summer employment and have written letters asking Boston restaurants to hire Harvard kitchen staff," he says.

A representative of the Phillips Brooks House Committee for Economic Change is coordinating a student petition showing support for the dining hall workers.

"There aren't many people who can go without eating for three months," says Mary M. Mitchell '95, referring to how long workers would be laid off.

"It's bad enough of [the administration] to do this in the first place, but to do this in the first place, but to do it this late is a gratuitous assertion of power," she says.