Union Members Protest MIT Connection to Site

Twenty members of a local union walked into the executive offices at MIT yesterday morning protesting the university's connection with 300 striking workers at a nuclear missile test site in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The demonstration lasted five minutes before campus police quietly escorted the protestors out of the building shortly after 10 a.m.

Protestors said they chose to demonstrate at MIT because of the university's close connections to EG&G, a Wellesley-based high techonology company founded by an MIT professor and two of his graduate students.

EG&G is the parent corporation of Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company (REECO), which is the principal contractor at the Nevada nuclear test site.

Yesterday's protestors asked to see MIT president Paul Gray, who was not in his office during the incident. "They told Provost John Deutch that they had 'a grievance with EG&G.' He spoke to them and then the police ushered them out pretty quickly," MIT spokesman Robert DiIorio said yesterday.

No MIT students were involved in the brief protest, DiIorio said, adding that he "could not see connection to MIT at all."

Paul Z. Lanni, financial officer for the union, said yesterday that his group sympathasizes with the ten striking unions and hopes to "make MIT put pressure on EG&G to negotiate with the people who are out on strike because MIT has a lot of weight with EG&G."

"If EG&G has the megabucks to give MIT for Building 34 [a research facility on campus] they can afford to give their workers the wages they deserve," said Lanni. He also said that MIT's provost "was totally apathetic to our cause."

A spokesman for EG&G's Nevada subsidiary denied that either MIT or the parent company were involved in the labor dispute. "EG&G is not involved with this strike, it is entirely REECO's affair, we are dealing with this completely ourselves," said Steve Leon, public information officer for REECO.

Negotiators this week worked out settlements with a few of the unions involved, allowing 500 of the 3500 striking workers to return to work on Tuesday.