Maintenance Men End Wage Strike At Harvard Club

Maintenance employees at the Harvard Club of New York returned to work after their four-day strike was settled Monday, April 3. The strike was the club's first in 25 years.

Nine of the club's 190 employees are maintenance workers. Although even of the nine did strike, the other employees did not honor the picket line, and the club remained open.

The strikers were members of the International Union of Operating Engineers. Their picket signs and leaflets charged that the Harvard Club paid its maintenance workers 30 per cent less than the Yale Club and 40 per cent less than the Princeton Club paid theirs.

"Ask where your dues are going," the leaflets told Club members.

The union asked that beginning maintenance men be raised from $115 per week to $135, and that the wages of maintenance mechanics be increased to $143 and steam and refrigeration engineers to $175.

L. D. Bates, the club librarian, said yesterday that the Club functioned normally throughout the strike. He declined to reveal the final settlement, maintaining that he did not want to harm negotiations now underway in other clubs.

"It's difficult operating clubs these days," Albert H. Gordon, president of the Club, said yesterday. He added that he hoped all the trouble was over