Holcombe was elected shop steward in December largely because, he says, of grievances he had raised the month before: he had charged in a four-page statement he circulated and gave to management that two of his supervisors "feel within their right to disregard the human rights of employees." He continued: "I have gone out of my way to be consistent, bumble and of good service to the Harvard Dining Halls. So I fail to understand why I deserve such harsh treatment."

In late December, shortly after his election, Holcombe submitted another list of grievances to William N. Mullins, manager of employee relations. Then on January 22, his supervisor, Frances E. Sweeney, charges he left the Currier kitchen for half an hour to organize an employees' meeting at North House on company time. The meeting was the latest in a string of minor battles between Holcombe, who had been registering constant complaints and papering the bulletin boards with pronunciamenti, and his superiors.

The next day, January 23, Sweeney and Holcombe had a talk. "With much difficulty," she later wrote, "I finally convinced Sherman to come to my office at 2 p.m. hoping to calm his ire and explain to him why such procedures cannot be allowed. Although, I prefer to forget all the unpleasant details of this meeting I feel obligated to report the threat Mr. Holcombe made to me. That is quote: "and you better watch out for your job."

On January 27 Sweeney wrote an angry letter to Frank J. Weissbecker, director of Food Services, outlining and complaining about Holcombe's legion grievances against Harvard. Two days later, Holcombe was called in to the dining hall manager's office, where three supervisors and one member of the Personnel Office were waiting for him.

"Vivienne Rubesky [an employee relations representative] talked to me for 20 minutes, but I wouldn't talk," Holcombe says. "So then she called Personnel and asked for him. I don't know who him is, but after talking to him she went back in the office and came out and said I was suspended." Holcombe got an unpaid suspension for the rest of that day and the following three working days--a suspension he says is a direct result of his being an active shop steward.

Earlier this month Mullins held a hearing on Holcombe's suspension. By that time Holcombe and Stefani had reached some sort of detente and Stefani and a union lawyer sat in on the hearing, which resulted in a reduction of Holcombe's unpaid suspension from three days to one. Mullins will not respond specifically to Holcombe's charges, saying only that he feels the suspension is justified and that the scheduling policies Holcombe is complaining about have been worked out between Harvard and the union.

Holcombe now says he still won't accept the suspension, and just this week filed another grievance complaining that Mullins "degraded" him and "took the Lord's name in vain" in a meeting they had on Monday. He also criticises Stefani for not being at the meeting to defend him against the questioning of six supervisors.

Like many workers grievances. Holcombe's have a specific focus but seem more important for the general malaise they portray. Harvard to him is the powerful, anonymous Him on the other end of the phone, the organization he says portrays him as "a dull witted man full of absurd notions"--while he must seem to Harvard an inexperienced troublemaker, someone who, as Stefani says, needs to "get educated" to the way labor management relations are usually conducted here Holcombe's aggressive, stream-of-grievances. Harvard-as-enemy style of shop stewardship is new to the University, and although Balsam seems to share Holcombe's attitudes he has been quieter and avoided disciplinary trouble.

"Employees here haven't looked into what the University could do for them." Holcombe says. "They're afraid of losing their jobs. I know employees at Harvard are dissatisfied, but under fear of suspension they won't speak out. To the people in my shop I'm a hero. I'm brave. I don't care about losing my job. You can go in any dining hall and all you hear is gripes--but they won't go in with those gripes."

"I've united my dining halls," he says. "They don't like people wearing union buttons. They don't mind people paying dues, but when they start acting like they're in the union they don't like it."

* * * * *

The union hall of Local 186 of the Cooks and Pastry Cooks Association, AFL-CIO, is on Berkeley St. near Boston's South End, on the second floor of a crumbling brick building. It's an old office, dim with scuffed linoleum floors and paraphernalia all over the walls. Most of the space in the office is taken up by a large room filed with folding chairs that face a podium.

On either side of the podium are portraits, one of George Washington and the other of Jesus Christ, and two flags, one American and the other the Cooks' special flag, which has crossed knives and forks on a white background. There are commemorative pictures covering the walls, all of them old and chronicling various union events through the years, and photographs of all the U.S. presidents since the local started, except Richard Nixon. There are two photographs Stefani takes special care to point out to a visitor: one of his son posing with a cake that won a culinary arts contest, and the other of the original members of the local, all but two of whom are dead. The air is heavy and dark and preservative.

Stefani, who works in the Cooks' only private office and has pictures of St. Francis Assissi and Pope John XXIII on his wall, joined the Cooks in 1928. He had come to America from England in 1928, and he worked as a chief in restaurants around Boston, staying at the Copley Plaza Hotel's restaurant for most of his career.

"In 1928 a guy--he's dead now, used to cook at the Copley--came up to me and said, 'Joe, why don't you join the union?'" Stefani says. "I said, 'What's the union?' He said it was better wages. I said 'OK, let me go upstairs to my locker and get my three dollars. So I got my three dollars and I was in the union."