http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/us/harvards-cafeteria-workers-strike.html 2016-10-11 19:48:23 No End in Sight to Strike by Harvard’s Cafeteria Workers Over Wages The strike is now in its seventh day, and workers marched on campus Tuesday in a clash with the nation’s wealthiest university. === A dispute over wages and benefits between Harvard was relying on employees who volunteered to work in the university’s dining halls, which were operating on a skeleton schedule and offering reduced options and boxed lunches. In a draft of a letter to be posted universitywide on Tuesday, by Marilyn Hausammann, Harvard’s vice president for human resources, detailed the university’s disappointment with the workers’ union, Unite Here Local 26, for what it said was a refusal “to participate in any meaningful dialogue” to resolve the dispute. “We stand ready to continue to work with the union and mediators to try to find a fair and reasonable resolution,” Ms. Hausammann wrote, “but this will require engagement by the union on these issues.” The dispute with Local 26, which represents about 750 cafeteria workers, had been brewing since May, and students were said On Tuesday, cafeteria workers and their supporters According to Harvard, which has an “Our hourly wage is the highest among cafeteria workers and university service workers in Boston,” Tania deLuzuriaga, a spokeswoman for Harvard, said in an interview on Tuesday. In bargaining talks with Local 26, Ms. Hausammann said in the letter, the university offered to raise the average wages for dining workers to $24.08 an hour and to provide summer stipends of up to $250 a week. The university would not make changes to health insurance costs for union workers, saying that the monthly health insurance cost ($104 for an individual and $281 for a family) was below national averages and that it had not changed since 2008. A telephone message to the union was not immediately returned on Tuesday, but the university has said that Local 26 requested a 22.5 percent increase in compensation over a four-year period and stipends of $450 a week during summer and winter breaks. As the strike loomed, Harvard’s students took to ordering provisions online, according to “I understand it’s for legitimate purposes, but I’m worrying about midterms right now,” Sofia Garcia, a freshman, told The Post. “I don’t need to worry about where my food is coming from.”