Hunter College Cafeteria Workers Win Contract from AVI
After months of working with no contract and facing the prospect of losing the free family health benefits that they’d been receiving for years, the cafeteria workers at Hunter College finally won a collective bargaining agreement from AVI Foodsystems! This contract includes free family health benefits, a significant employer contribution to the employee’s retirement plan, and substantial wage increases over the next three years. As a result of this settlement (pending ratification on Friday) the boycott of AVI at the Hunter College cafeteria, planned for today, has been called off.
This victory did not come without a struggle, however. The fact that the workers got to keep their wages, will get a raise the next two years, and will get to keep their health benefits, resulted in large part from the worker and student actions that took place on the Hunter campus.
On September 3, 2009, the workers staged a 15 minute work stoppage and rallied for health benefits and pension inside the cafeteria in front of students in the middle of the lunch hour rush (see the video of that action here, pic to the right). Soon after, the workers and their union, Unite Here Local 100, reached out to the Hunter College students and faculty for support. After weeks of organizing and with the great support from the Professional Staff Congress, the CUNY faculty union, the Hunter College community staged a rally of around 150 people at the Hunter College main campus on October 5.After an October 8th negotiation failed to result in a fair contract, Hunter students and faculty began organizing a boycott of AVI at the Hunter College cafeteria on October 29 unless AVI agreed to give the workers a fair contract. Students and faculty collected over 1000 pledges to boycott the cafeteria on the 29th. Then, this past Friday, facing the prospect of an impending boycott, AVI finally agreed to the workers’ reasonable requests. As a result, the boycott has been canceled.
AVI finally did the right thing at Hunter College. They also gave the AVI workers at Sarah Lawrence College a fair process for deciding whether to form a union this past Friday. If workers there choose to form a union, AVI will have a chance to do the right thing again, and agree to a fair contract with the workers at Sarah Lawrence.
The student-worker coalition that formed at Hunter College celebrated this victory yesterday afternoon. Come back to this site for an update, with video reactions from the workers and students who fought so hard to win a good contract.
