The University inked an unprecedented five-year deal with its dining services workers last week, ending weeks of tense negotiations and narrowly averting a strike.

Picketers set to hit the streets had to be called off last Wednesday when the pact was sealed just hours before the contract was due to expire and a strike to begin.

Both sides said they were pleased with the deal.

"It looks wonderful," said Michael E. Finklea, a general cook at the School of Public Health and a 12-year employee at Harvard. "I'm really really pleased with it.... We have a very good contract for five years--better job security and better wages."

Although Harvard Director of Labor Relations Timothy R. Manning could not be reached for comment, he hailed the new deal as a "departure from traditional bargaining" in a statement released yesterday.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the new deal is its length. The five-year pact is the longest in the 60 years that Harvard's dining services workers have been unionized, according to Domenic M. Bozzotto, president of Hotel Workers Local 26, which represents the 554 dining services employees. Normally, dining services workers sign three-year deals, Bozzotto said.

The five year deal offers enhanced job security for the dining services workers, who said they were flabbergasted that the University agreed to such a long contract.

"Why would they have done it? We're still in the dark on that one," Finklea said.

Union leaders also said that the University conceded on the major sticking point in the negotiations: its attempts to gain more flexibility in hiring non-union, non-local workers, who are less expensive than members of the union.

Instead, the union and the University have established a Standing Joint Labor/Management Committee for Dining Services. The committee will seek innovative ways to make Harvard Dining Services (HDS) more efficient, so the operation can stay competitive without contracting out, according to union officials.

"The establishment of a formal mechanism for ongoing dialogue is very much in keeping with Harvard's labor relations philosophy," Manning said in the statement. "It takes some important issues out of the often contentious arena of contract negotiations and creates a longer term process by which managers and workers can work together to their mutual benefit."

Union leaders had reacted angrily to the possibility that the University would use non-union subcontractors.

Earlier this month, Bozzotto told The Crimson that there would be a strike unless the University pulled subcontracting off the table. Indeed, dining services workers had struck in 1983 and 1986 over that very issue.

Bozzotto praised Manning for finding a creative way around the impasse.

"What he did was take this stone on our shoe that we were going to strike over, and...what he really did was bring some innovative language to the table," Bozzotto said. "Remember we've had two strikes over this stuff, and if they had negotiated the way they used to, there would have been a third."

Other highlights of the contract include: