Bozzotto Discusses the Discrete Charm Of Harvard's Dining Hall Work Force

Organizing Harvard's dining hall workers poses certain problems for Local 26 president Domenic M. Bozzotto.

Bozzotto, who will be negotiating a contract with Harvard in mid-May for this union of hotel and restaurant workers, admits that every work force has a distinct personality that must be considered when organizing workers. But he also says that "workers are the same wherever they are."

"Their needs remain the same. They want to improve their standard of living and improve their working conditions."

Harvard's body of dining hall workers is unique because most dining hall work is not year-round, Bozzotto says.

"In the hotels work is 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week," he says of other worker groups he represents.

At Harvard, however, work is seasonal. Although "Harvard workers used to be able to collect unemployment during the summer," Bozzotto says, that changed in 1985. At that time, former President Ronald W. Reagan declared university jobs "temporary employment."

"This created a problem in the work force and resulted in a high turnover rate among workers," the Local 26 head says. Not everyone could survive the summer without unemployment benefits, so they had to find work elsewhere.

Since the last contract negotiations in 1986, Harvard has offered dining hall employees work in buildings and grounds. "Harvard understands the importance of keeping a steady work force," Bozzotto says.

Another unusual aspect of the University's work force is the impact of students on the worker-management relationship, Bozzotto says.

"There's a voice we don't hear in the dining halls, and that is the voice of the students." He says students should be included in worker-management meetings or at least have a liaison through whom to voice their concerns.

These factors--along with the question of overwork--will be key priorities in the upcoming negotiations, Bozzotto says. "We find ourselves in a position of reminding the University that the students are the reason everyone is there."

In fact, Bozzotto says, Harvard often uses its status as a university as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

"A lot of times, Harvard comes to the table saying, `We're a non-profit organization, and we can't afford such expenses,'" Bozzotto says, adding that non-profit is merely "paper-status" for the University.

"Harvard can't say that they are a non-profit organization that fundraises with a tin cup, given the size of their endowment," Bozzotto says. "We have to look at them as we would any corporation."

Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the United States.

Bozzotto says the University tries to divide the union from the students by saying increased wages will push up tuition.

"The food service contract is a microdot in that situation," he says. "Harvard determines tuition on a much larger scale than that."

According to Bozzotto, negotiations with Harvard have never been easy. He and Local 26 have had to resort to short-term strikes when previous negotiations with the University became heated, as in 1983 when the union held a sit-in at the Holyoke Center.

Bozzotto, who describes himself as a "non-violent direct confrontationalist," has in the past picketed President Derek C. Bok's home and those of other members of Harvard management--as in 1986, when the University threatened to contract out food service at the Faculty Club and divide the Business School workers from the union's benefit structure.

Bozzotto says he chose this tactic because negotiations were taking place during the summer, when it would have been futile to picket the University.

At that time, he says, "You could throw a hand grenade in Cambridge, and it wouldn't hit anybody."

"Harvard sometimes has that elitist attitude that they don't need any advice," Bozzotto says. "But the dining halls cannot be run in some kind of vacuum without student input," he says.

"I believe each contract and work force has its own personality, and the last thing I want to do is impose my personality on that," says Bozzotto, who says he sees himself as spokesperson for the workers. "The Harvard workers are leading the direction we go, as it should be."

In March of 1990, Bozzotto's term as president of Local 26 will end, and the Local 26 leader says he is unsure whether he will run again. He says that he would like to allow the union's "younger leadership to grow and expand."

Over the last seven years, he says he has concentrated on building a strong middle leadership.

"There are an abundance of people who have the foresight to lead Local 26," Bozzotto says.

"I haven't given enough thought to what I will do," he says, adding that a campaign for political office is not in the cards.