In the late afternoon of May 1, a group of about 75 people chanted as they marched along Memorial Drive, up Plympton St., on to Massachusetts Ave. Spreading out along the perimeter of the Yard, the activists clamoured about the iron gates, attempting to gain entry onto Harvard's property.

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, University police locked the Yard up tight, prohibiting entry or exit. Police described the activists as "outsiders" and refused to allow them to "trespass."

Meanwhile, 10 other "outside" activists avoided the center of the action and slipped into Holyoke Center, Harvard's 10-story administrative complex. They staged a six-hour sit-in in the planning office of the 350th celebration, exiting just after 11:00 p.m. into the arms of fellow protesters and into the spotlights of three local television stations.

The demonstration received more attention than any other this year. But it was not organized by the traditional opponents of Harvard's South Africa investments policy; the march and sit-in were orchestrated by Domenic M. Bozzotto, the president of the Boston-based union responsible for Harvard's dining hall workers.

That day and into the night, Bozzotto pranced around the Holyoke Center courtyard in his Local 26 jacket as if he were Lenin himself. He appeared on television screens and in newspapers across the Boston area, bashing Harvard and Shell Oil for their connections to South Africa. His unconventional methods surprised some in the Harvard community, angered others and bewildered most.

Bozzotto has been around for about five years, but this year marked one of his most visible. He was behind much of the upheaval at the Faculty Club, where his workers protested against new outside managers and what they called unfair overtime practices. Threatening strikes and causing several scenes inside the building itself during the school year, Bozzotto rocked the traditionally sophisticated and removed air of the club with real-world concerns.

During one incident earlier this spring, one of Bozzotto's union activists refused to leave the club's kitchen until Harvard officials agreed to negotiate on a labor dispute. The workers this union leader represents were so incited that one employee described the Faculty Club as utterly repressive. "It's like Poland. It's just hell. It's like Solidarity."

Solidarity is exactly the image he is trying to forge. Combining social issues with union issues, Bozzotto attempted, with some success, to form an alliance with students, an alliance he hopes will exert more force on a stubborn Harvard management than unionism alone. His foray into the divestment world and into the media spotlight were calculated manuevers to gain the support of student and faculty activists, observers speculate. Thus, Bozzotto has pushed the union movement, with mixed success from an isolated facet of the Harvard experience into mainstream anti-Harvard administration.

Stealing Ice Cream

Bozzotto began his labor career as a waterboy in a Boston hotel at age 13. He and his buddies stole ice cream from hotel freezers at night to give them energy to wash dishes. Now, 35 years later, Bozzotto runs the hotel and restaurant workers union. But he still eats ice cream to give him energy: three banana splits every day.

Since his election in 1981, Bozzotto has transformed the relatively passive Local 26--which represents all of Harvard's dining hall workers, as well as the Faculty Club cooks and waitresses--into an active entity, aware of their rights as members of the community, says Eugene Bruskin, who heads the Boston-based Massachusetts Labor Support Project.

Throughout this year and his term as Local 26 president, job security has been the central issue facing labor at Harvard, says Bozzotto. In order to run its eating establishments more efficiently, Harvard has in the past two years contracted out both the Faculty Club and Kresge Hall, the Business School dining hall. The change in management has threatened jobs in both places, and the union will attempt to revise the contract so as to assure jobs and the continuation of Harvard benefits to workers after a change in management.

Faculty Club Disputes

This year a series of labor disputes developed while the Faculty Club was under the management of Creative Gourmet, a private catering firm. The union and some workers charged that Creative Gourmet brought in outside employees to replace regular workers who would normally be paid overtime rates for that time.

After a narrowly-averted strike in April, the University terminated its contract with the management firm, but the labor disputes will not be resolved until the new contract is signed June 18.