The Radcliffe College Council last night took no action concerning the proposed strike of College employees, and no strike action will be effected until Wednesday evening.
"The Council felt very strongly that a board of this sort is not the right group to decide upon terms," Mary I. Bunting, President of Radcliffe, said last night. The Council voted to give negotiating power to J. Boyd Britton, administrative vice-president of Radcliffe, Mrs. Bunting said.
Britton will meet this afternoon with representatives of Local 254 of the Building Services Union and attempt to reach an agreement, Mrs. Bunting said. Members of the Union will vote tomorrow on the College's offer.
Edward T. Sullivan, the Union's negotiator, has agreed to announce the Union's decision at an RUS-sponsored meeting of Radcliffe students tomorrow evening, Deborah A. Batts, president of RUS, said yesterday.
According to Mrs. Bunting, the workers involved in negotiations fall into three categories:
* Fifty-seven maintenance workers, the lowest paid of whom now receive $2.45 an hour and are demanding $3.00 an hour. The College is offering $2.60 an hour as of July 1, 1968, and $2.75 as of July, 1969.
"Were we to agree to these demands we would be adding $60,000 to the College budget, which already has a deficit of $72,000," Mrs. Bunting said.
* Seventy accommodators, or dormitory maids, who now are paid $1.84 an hour, and are asking $2.00 immediately and $2.12 next year. The College is offering $1.95 and $2.07.
* Twenty-two waitresses receiving $1.44 an hour along with a $5.00 allowance for living at Radcliffe and free meals. The Union is asking Harvard rates, $1.94 now and $2.06 next year. Union demands in the other categories are above the Harvard level. The College is offering $1.73 and $1.83 with meals but no living allowances. Instead, those waitresses choosing to live at Radcliffe would pay the College $5 each week.
The wages demanded by the Union would mean an increase of about $50 room and board for each Radcliffe student, Mrs. Bunting said. Any costs resulting from the strike would also probably appear on students' term bills, she added.
Petitions urging student support of the strikes are still being circulated by the ad hoc committee formed at Radcliffe pledging students not to break the strike by serving themselves in the event that there be food but no waitresses.
But according to Miss Batts, Sullivan had requested that the students take no action until plans are definite, saying that such action would look like "bad faith" on the part of the Union.
"A strike and strikebreaking have to be defined by those people doing the striking," she said, adding that much of the information being circulated by the ad hoc committee is erroneous.
At a Bertram Hall meeting on the strike last night a South House head resident announced that North House dorm maids had burned copies of the petition being circulated.
"The Council will support Mr. Britton in whatever decision he makes," Mrs. Bunting said, "but certainly backs him in thinking that Radcliffe wages should not be far different from Harvard's."
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L'Affaire Brustein