Concluding......And Continuing

This time last week John J. Mark, president of the Maintenance Trades Council of New England, was threatening a strike by the council's 331 Harvard members, all Buildings and Grounds employees.

It seems now that Mark's threats were largely idle; both sides in negotiations called this week's session profitable, and the trades council seems less than insistent about getting a substantial pay raise out of the University.

The trades council's contract still ends January 6, after which the union could still strike--but it now appears that the University will get out of this fall's unusually heavy negotiating schedule relatively cheaply.

In a year of more than 10 per cent inflation, the trades council will probably end up with a pay raise in the neighborhood of 7 per cent; the employees representative association settled for 7.6 per cent, with 15 cents an hour extra for evening and night shift work.