Harvard Dining Services (HDS) Director Michael P. Berry vigorously defended the managers of the Harvard Union dining hall yesterday against charges of racial discrimination and denied allegations that HDS employees are harassed on the job.

Berry, who returned yesterday from a week-long trip to Europe where he attended a conference of dining services administrators, said in an interview that he would begin questioning workers more closely about conditions in the College's 13 dining halls.

Berry also insisted that he remains accessible to his employees and said he is working on plans for an employee seminar devoted to racial and ethnic sensitivity training.

"Clearly, I'm concerned about everything I've read," Berry said. "I made the rounds this morning...I was just trying to gauge how people felt they were doing and gauge morale."

"I was getting good responses in all the houses and, in fact, I was getting some words of encouragement," he added.

Berry's comments were his first responses to allegations leveled at HDS management by Darryl Hicks, a former Harvard Union cook and labor union shop steward who in December filed state and federal complaints charging racial harassment and on-the-job harassment. Hicks was fired by Berry in early April.

Hicks, who is Black, has drawn support from fellow HDS shop stewards and from student members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Labor Alliance (HRLA) and the Black Students Association (BSA). The shop stewards and the students are circulating separate petitions demanding his reinstatement.

Other HDS workers interviewed over the last week have been divided over Hicks' claims of racial discrimination at the College's dining halls. But many workers have supported his charge that employees are harassed for calling in sick.

Berry has denied those charges in the past and he strongly reiterated his defense yesterday.

"It has been tougher since I've been here from the standpoint that I've done the things that I've been told to do in the contract," Berry said, explaining that HDS workers are audited twice a year with regard to absences. "I have the hardest-working employees in the University and I tell them that over and over."

Berry said he has made dramatic changes at HDS during his tenure, and asserted that those changes have caused concern among workers, spawning many of the charges about harassment.

"Quite frankly, when I came here, the board program was not very good," he said. "Change causes anxiety, and so forth."

Still, the HDS director said he would ask workers specific questions in an attempt to measure their morale.

"Since I don't pick it up on my radar, perhaps I need to sit with groups and see how people feel about it," Berry said.

But Berry affirmed his decision to fire Hicks, and denied that Harvard's dining halls are tense environments in which to work.

"The decision I made relative to terminating Darryl Hicks was the correct decision," he said, adding that he was not aware of Hicks' state and federal complaints until nearly four months after they were made, when they were first reported in The Crimson.