University Wage Offer Unfair, Janitors Claim

Discontent swept the ranks of the University's janitors this week as they failed to gain their long-stated objectives of a 40-hour week and five percent pay raise.

With the University Employees Representative Association ready to start signing new contracts early next week, five percent raises are virtually assured for maintenance workers, superintendents, maids, and police. The majority of these have been working a 40-hour week for at least a year.

The janitors' complaint, the CRIMSON learned yesterday, is that they were offered by H. U. E. R. A. president Daniel G. Mulvihill a choice between either a 40-hour week with no change in total weekly pay, or a five percent raise with the same schedule of 40 hours one week, 44 the next. They chose the first in a vote held late last week.

Want Square Deal

"All we want is a square deal," said one janitor, who asked that his name be withheld,"and we aren't getting it." He said Mulvihill told the janitors that the hours cut amounted to the same thing as a five percent raise, but he said the janitors feel they are entitled to the same advantages that other union members have gained in the past two years.

All janitors contacted by the CRIMSON agree that they do not think Mulvihill treated them fairly by limiting them to a choice between the pay raise and the hours cut, while other divisions of the union which already have the 40-hour week are getting a five percent raise in addition.

They feel Mulvihill could have secured them contracts as good as those of most other University employees.

Vote 40 Hour Week

Mulvihill put the choice up to the janitors at a meeting in union headquarters. The men voted for the 40-hour week, with a guarantee of two consecutive days off each week and with a chance to work overtime at 50 percent over the new hourly rate.

Quite a few, however, "walked out of the meeting in disgust" over the choice, according to one janitor.