Date: Thu, 25 Oct 84 14:37:59 edt
From:: Walter Hamscher
To: *mac@mc
Subject: potentially *TRIVIAL*

This looks pretty serious, folks.  How many of *us* go to GSL
to eat Dim Sum or Cold Cuts or whatever?  We certainly don't
want to see that door close; perhaps people should resign
themselves to being as well-behaved as we all were last week...

>From pp 39-40 of this October's issue of "Finc.", in the
"Rumours & Trial Balloons" section:

"...Bill Lellinger, director of public affairs for the Center
on Lunch Policy, claims that the sanitation engineering union is
now pressuring GSL through, for example, local sanitation laws.
Last month the AI lab was ordered to cease and desist serving
unsliced bread at noon on Fridays because Cambridge laws forbade
the feeding of swine within the city limits...

"...Whatever the reasons for union concern, the fact remains that the 
AFL-CIO has called for a ban on graduate student lunches, and the
Service Employees International Union has passed a resolution opposing
in principle the feeding of groups of students on carpets.  To halt
this union drive, State Rep. Virrie Pino (D-Somerville) introduced
an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act last year to legalize
lunches in playrooms and other common areas, including the previously
excluded Funds Fishing industry.

"'The Pino bill won't allow 40 students to eat in the playroom,'
says Leadbill. 'We realize that's a sweatshop.  But free lunches
are the wave of the future.  Still, the union can win this fight
by simply not vacuuming the Playroom carpet.  Without that
negative pressure we may not be able to get [the crumbs] out of
the carpet.

And oh yes by the way there is a GSL this Friday at noon in the
8th floor playroom hosted by Mark Shirley and Brian Williams.