"My friends at other places think that I'm lucky to work here. When I tell them what I'm actually making no one can believe it."

Union Chief Negotiator Bill Jaeger says that typical union workers are not exactly experts on the economic overview of the entire University. They are, he said, "experts on the economic life of a Harvard support staff member."

Three such workers appeared before the management negotiating team at a bargaining session in July. Brought together again last week, the workers told tales of economic distress.

All three take public transportation to work, and all say they like their jobs. They also say the ongoing contract talks have not harmed their job performance.

Kim Dobbie, 29, works in the financial office at the American Repertory Theater. She has worked at Harvard for five years and is the single parent of a five-year-old daughter, Eva Wilbar, now in public school. Dobbie lives in West Cambridge and has a B.F.A. in theater management.

She makes $24,000 a year.

Dobbie, too, worries about financial security.

"The loss of one paycheck could be really detrimental to me and my daughter," she says.

Dobbie says a raise could mean being able to buy new clothes for her daughter, or being able to go out to dinner at McDonald's without having to worry about being set back for an entire week.

She says her current salary is barely enough to cover the essentials.

"We certainly don't have savings. We buy our new clothes at K-Mart," Dobbie says. "We certainly don't have luxuries in our lives."

Before the Harvard union was created, Dobbie says, things were even worse. She started at Harvard making $15,200 a year. "I really wasn't eating very much," she says.

Low pay from Harvard also forced her into several painful situations, she says. When her daughter was a baby she thought she might have to give her up for adoption. And at times, her daughter was exposed to abusive child care situations because it was so hard to find affordable child care, she says.

"I'm not telling you this because it's a pitiful story," she says, but because similar cases occur "across the University" and people don't know about them.

Doris Collier, 61, lives on the Medford hillside. She's been married for 42 years to a man who works for the state housing authority. She has six grandchildren. Both her parents are alive--her father is in a New Hampshire nursing home.