Kyle Schafer
A few months ago, I was sitting in my office with coworkers joking about the term “flexitarian,” which apparently is a term for people who are vegetarian… part-time. In other words, it is for people who eat meat, just not at every single meal. As the resident vegan in the office, it seemed especially hard to take the concept seriously. I figured if any term was necessary, standards like “omnivore” or “healthy” might suffice.
But I guess the term caught on. Compass Group this week announced a new “Be a Flexitarian” initiative. The plan is to provide more meat-free options in its cafeterias (on campuses and elsewhere). Whatever you think of the term flexitarian, Compass’s program is not such a bad idea.
Compass worked with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) on the program. The HSUS president said in a press release, “It doesn’t take an all-or-nothing approach to make a major impact, and giving customers more meat-free meal choices will improve health, reduce the impact of global warming and help animals.”
It makes sense. Though I choose to take the step of removing all animal products from my diet, I know not everyone will do the same. If the program truly reduces the meat consumption in the cafeterias of one of the world’s largest food service providers, I’m all for it.
Of course, we have to see what it means on the ground. If all it means are posters about “flexitarianism” plastered around dining halls, I suspect we won’t see a big drop in hamburger consumption on campus. And as someone who has struggled to eat vegan meals in far too many college cafeterias across the country, even ones that claim to be friendly to restricted diets, I know that “expanded options” may not translate into satisfactory meals. Compass has the right intentions, but they have their work cut out for them.
Kyle Schafer
Happy New Year, dearest Stir It Up readers. After some time visiting family, battling snow storms and catching up on other things over the winter break, we’re back to keep you up on all of your favorite campus food service news stories.
Last week, I was taking some time to read through stories in the food service industry press. While you may not like their politics, industry publications are actually pretty good sources to keep tabs on the food service companies on your campus. My magazine/website of choice for such purposes is Food Management.
Anyway, I wanted to share a couple snippets I belatedly stumbled across:
In 2009, the average cost of college and university meal plans went up by 6 percent. That seemed pretty steep to me, so I checked out how much the cost of eating out went up. Turns out, the cost increases on campuses far outpaced the year’s 2.1 percent inflation in the general “food away from home” category (you can always check out Consumer Price Index tables to track inflation).
So while costs are going up at a pretty quick pace, some colleges are forcing more people into meal plans. Back in May, we wrote about the University of Louisville forcing all students, including commuters, to buy meal plans. They aren’t alone. In December, Food Management reported that Barnard College will begin requiring all students to purchase plans as well. It may be a good trend for the companies, but not helpful for students trying to live more affordably off campus.
Not everything in the industry is depressing though. For example, the University of Alaska is growing some of the produce for its dining services right on campus.
We’ll leave it at that for now, but feel free to send us your own updates about food service on your campus anytime.
Kyle Schafer
In the past few weeks, Aramark, Sodexo and Compass have released their Fiscal Year 2009 financial results. We thought you all might be interested to see some of the numbers behind these businesses, so here’s a set of links to check out:
Compass:
Sodexo:
- Sodexo FY2009 Summary.
- Sodexo Powerpoint Presentation.
- Sodexo FY2009 results webcast.
- Sodexo FY2009 financial appendix.
- Sodexo appendix of new clients in 2009.
Aramark:
As financial results and other major announcements come out from major food service companies, we’ll do our best here at Stir It Up to keep you posted, so make sure you keep checking back. Another good way to stay on top of the news is to set up Google Alerts for your company of choice to get the rundown sent to you via email as often as you’d like.
(Photo by Alan Cleaver, used here under Create Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)
Ian Mikusko
Last Friday the food service workers at Sarah Lawrence College were officially recognized as UNITE HERE Local 100 members. 75% of the workers, employees of AVI Foodsystems, signed a union authorization card. This is a great victory for the workers who, along with food service workers at Hunter College and the University of Southern California, had to struggle to get it. Next up for the Sarah Lawrence workers…contract negotiations. We’ll keep you up-to-date as that unfolds, and we’ll post video of worker and student reaction to the initial Sarah Lawrence victory soon.
In the meantime, here's a repost of the student-worker delegation at Sarah Lawrence that preceded the workers winning a neuatrality agreement from AVI by one day:
Kyle Schafer
I know we’ve already told you that the inaugural Stir It Up conference in Chicago was a huge success, but I’m sure all of you in the Stir It Up world want to know a bit more than that!
The busy 5-hour day included introductions to the campus food service industry, Unite Here and the Student/Farmworker Alliance. Attendees heard from a panel of students who already have done great work around their campus food service providers as well as an incredibly moving panel of Unite Here Local 1 members who are fighting to improve their lives. The day ended with trainings on organizing and strategic campaign planning, giving students more of the skills they need to build power and make a difference on their campuses.
The hard work of the DePaul students who hosted the event and the other students from across the city who organized their peers to attend is still paying off. In the days following the conference, students and workers from the different campuses have begun to become friends on Facebook and are building the kinds of connections that will change campus food service for the better.
If for some reason you still don’t believe our “huge success” claim, though, take a look at what the conference attendees have to say about the day’s events:
“Hearing how the students really wanted to help the workers out made me feel invigorated with a new sense of determination. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers presentation really made me think about the connection between us making the food and the workers who make everything we do in the kitchen possible.” – Alan Camacho, food service worker, DePaul University (See Alan’s full reflection here.)
“At the conference I got a chance to meet workers, fellow students and organizers on equal footing and build real relationships that shows me that my work is part of something bigger. Going back my campus I have a renewed sense that I'm not alone, and that together we can win." – Luis Brennan, student, University of Chicago. (See Luis’s full reflection here.)
“It felt really good to get things off my chest about my working environment. I was very pleased at how the students actually cared and listened to what the employees had to say. … The conference with the students was one the best times of this year.” – Chanteen Hardway, food service worker, DePaul University. (See Chanteen’s full reflection here.)
“The general sentiment was intimacy, a real sense of responsibility and commitment to one another as human beings. Our struggles are just as much our own as they are everyone's. I was both humbled and engaged by the workers' testimonies, and look forward to deepening my relationship with this community, and committing myself more fully to the union..” - Abbey Schumacher, student, DePaul University. (See Abbey’s full reflection here.)
“The turnout by itself was remarkable and inspiring, but the key thing for me to experience was dialogue with students – sharing my personal experiences and listening to their responses, it was supremely awesome to realize the mutual concern.” -- Ana Prillaman, barista, DePaul University. (See Ana’s full reflection here.)
“I left feeling great to know that these people understood what we are going through and are willing to do all that they can to help us.” – Nathan Arnold, food service worker, DePaul University. (See Nathan’s full reflection here.)
Kyle Schafer
The Stir It Up miniconference in Chicago on Saturday was a huge success! Students from five schools across the Chicago area spent the day learning from each other and from campus food service workers also standing up for change.
We'll have some more posts about the conference in the coming days and weeks, including some video, but for now check out the photo set on Facebook. The photos were taken by Pat Brown, a student leader from DePaul. Here's a sampling:
Students and workers start out the day.
Workers Making Change panel discussion.
Ian Mikusko
Stir It Up Editor's Note: The article below was written by freelance journalist Ethan Genauer. It addresses Sodexo and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and Student/Farmworker Alliance's Dine with Dignity campaign. While SFA reports that Compass has reached an agreement with the CIW, Aramark and Sodexo still have not. The positions taken in the article are the author's.
So now what, Sodexo? Farmworkers fight on
Farmworkers take on Sodexo at 2009 national CFSC conference in Des Moines
by Ethan Genauer
by Ethan Genauer
At the 2009 national conference of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), food service provider Sodexo publicly announced the corporation's willingness to support a wage increase for tomato farmworkers in Florida and to adopt a code of conduct that would protect the farmworkers from human rights abuses.
But farmworkers insist that "the campaign against Sodexo is going to continue" until the corporation follows these words with a meaningful commitment that includes a signed agreement and concrete action to implement it.
"The communication [from Sodexo] does not mean anything if there are no concrete steps toward something that is real. We hope that what they are saying is sincere, and we are open to discussions, but only if they are ready to do the right thing," said Gerardo Reyes Chávez, a spokesperson for Florida's coalition of tomato farmworkers.
<!--break-->
Sodexo was one major sponsor of the 2009 national CFSC conference, held October 10-13 in Des Moines, Iowa. Meanwhile, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a grassroots non-union labor organization led by Florida tomato farmworkers, participated directly in the conference as plenary speakers.
CFSC is a North American coalition of diverse people and organizations working from the local to international levels to build community food security. With a diverse membership of almost 300 organizations from social and economic justice, anti-hunger, environmental, community development, sustainable agriculture, community gardening and other fields, CFSC is dedicated to building "strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food to all people at all times."
Sodexo's public announcement of support for a wage increase for farmworkers marked one of several positive -- yet so far tentative and inconclusive -- steps forward that were taken during the 2009 national CFSC conference toward advancing the negotiation of a long-awaited "Fair Food" agreement between CIW and one of the world's largest institutional food service providers. In addition, scores of CFSC participants -- some of whom learned about the issue for the first time -- vowed to escalate their pressure on Sodexo to reach a just agreement with the farmworkers.
Farmworkers "Fair Food" campaign targets Sodexo
Together with the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA), CIW launched their campaign on Sodexo in March 2009. By beginning to target Sodexho along with Compass Group and Aramark -- all corporate giants in the food service industry -- the farmworkers initiated a major new strategic phase in their ongoing "Campaign for Fair Food."
The farmworkers and their student allies chose to focus their campaign on these 3 corporations because "they dominate the on-campus dining services industry through contracts with thousands of higher education institutions."
"The low-cost, high-volume purchasing practices of the food service, supermarket, and fast-food industries," SFA then stated, "help to create conditions in the fields where poverty wages and other human rights abuses flourish." By educating and mobilizing students across the U.S. to "encourage university-level support for human rights and ethical food contracting," SFA hoped to urge Aramark, Compass and Sodexo to "join in the rising tide of social responsibility in the corporate food industry."
Earlier phases of the CIW's "Campaign for Fair Food" had focused on major restaurant and grocery chains. Since 2001, CIW has reached a series of landmark agreements with Yum Brands, McDonald's, Burger King, Subway and Whole Foods that guarantee at least a penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for these companies, a human rights-based code of conduct, a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields, and farmworker participation in the development and implementation of these reforms.
But because the powerful Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) agribusiness lobby had effectively threatened to levy massive fines on any Florida tomato grower who actually complied with these agreements, they were worth little more to the farmworkers than the paper they were written on. Since 2007, corporate tomato buyers have held approximately $1.5 million in escrow, until this deadlock could be broken and tomato growers would agree to pass on the negotiated wage increases to the farmworkers.
In September 2009, CIW won the first victory in their new campaign targeting corporate food service providers when Compass Group announced that the company will pay an extra 1.5 cents per pound of tomatoes, with one cent going directly to farmworkers. But unlike previous agreements, this time there was muscle behind the pact: Compass vowed to purchase Florida tomatoes only from growers who adhere to a comprehensive code of Fair Food standards. At the same time, Florida's third largest tomato grower -- East Coast Growers and Packers -- announced that it would break with FTGE in order to comply with these standards, thus ensuring the emergence of a real market for Fair Food tomatoes, for the first time in American history.
While this agreement still awaits proper implementation and enforcement (scheduled to begin with the 2010 growing season) on the ground in Florida, it is already considered to be a milestone and turning point in the long struggle of Florida's tomato farm workers for justice and human rights. With this agreement, tomato buyers such as Sodexo and Aramark "can no longer use the excuse of not signing an agreement with us because we did not have large growers on board," said CIW leader Gerardo Reyes Chávez.
Speaking at the press conference announcing this compact, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said, "This is a great victory for the farmworkers ... I hope to be a part of this partnership so that we can extend this kind of progress throughout the country.... way beyond just the agriculture arena, but also in the service sector fields where you see a lot of people of similar backgrounds being taken advantage of."
The Obama administration would provide "more incentive for these kinds of cooperative agreements to come about," Solis said. Yet weeks later, Sodexo and Aramark are still missing in action. With no public explanation for their ongoing refusal to enter serious talks with Florida's tomato farmworkers, these corporations have continued to resist joining the "rising tide" of corporate adherence to cooperative social responsibility through negotiation of labor agreements with the farmworkers who harvest the produce that they purchase.
Pressure on Sodexo heats up before & during CFSC conference
As a lead sponsor of the 2009 national CFSC conference, Sodexo had a cavalcade of corporate executives in attendance at the event, including Vice President for Corporate Citizenship Arlin Wasserman and US Sustainability Coordinator Lashawn Barker.
“We are committed to fostering a more sustainable food system and this conference is an important source of dialogue on how to promote healthy and sustainable food choices,” said Wasserman, in the CFSC press release announcing Sodexo's sponsorship of the conference.
But can any food system be truly sustainable without fair wages and human rights for farmworkers, who provide the labor to harvest many crops -- including tomatoes -- that otherwise would rot in the fields? CIW believes that sustainability and justice for farmworkers are inseparable.
"Sustainability, for so long, has been an idea that mainly contemplates being organic, pesticide-free, and good for the environment," said Chávez. "The second part [of sustainability] has been humane treatment for animals. And the third part has been supporting local economies and small family farmers. All of these things are really important for us too ... But sustainability is not complete if it does not include the labor issue. If there are no workers, there is nothing organic anyway."
Chávez acknowleged that while CIW has alliances with many small family farmers and agreements with two large organic tomato growers, most of the agricultural production in Florida is still conventional farming that uses pesticides. And most of the treatment of farmworkers, he said, is "very backwards," including labor conditions where farmworkers are routinely expected to continue working in the fields while farmers spray crops with toxic pesticides.
Because of this tremendous gap between the rhetoric of sustainability and the reality of farmworker mistreatment, during the week preceding the 2009 national CFSC conference, Sodexo faced a surge of scrutiny regarding its role in perpetuating inhumane labor conditions in Florida's tomato fields.
From October 5th to 9th, students across the U.S. coordinated a "Dine With Dignity Week of Action" calling on Sodexo and Aramark to "end the harvest of shame." At Wichita State University, for example, students organized a "tomato challenge" in their student union to educate peers about Sodexo's role in the exploitation of farmworkers and gathered over 1,000 signatures to a petition urging Sodexo to work with the CIW.
On October 8th, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) launched a new petition to Sodexo and Aramark condemning the stagnant wages of Florida's tomato farms that, "combined with the precarious and seasonal nature of farm labor, result in workers' sub-poverty annual earnings and create an environment where horrific forms of labor abuse flourish."
"With news of the Compass agreement with CIW," says the SLAP petition, "your companies can no longer claim that they meet the highest ethical standards." We expect that [you] will follow suit and establish agreements with CIW with all due diligence to demand those same higher standards of your tomato suppliers. Until that time, however, we have no choice but to intensify our educational efforts to inform our campuses and communities of Aramark's and Sodexo's role in prolonging Florida's harvest of shame.
Then on October 9th, in front of several thousand members of the CFSC's national e-mail discussion group, a concerned journalist publicly asked Sodexo: "Will Sodexo use the opportunity of the CFSC conference to announce your agreement with CIW and your commitment moving forward to fair wages for farmworkers? Or will Sodexo instead risk embarassment in front of the national movement of sustainable agriculture advocates by ignoring or denying CIW's call for justice?"
Finally, as the main portion of the CFSC conference opened during the morning of Sunday, October 11th, Sodexo continued to feel the pressure. The first plenary panel discussion, titled "From Commodities to Community," asked: "Can efforts [for community food security] collectively re-shape on a large scale the nature of the industrial food system, of which Iowa is at the heart? How far can we get with our current strategy of creating market and policy openings for community-based food systems without running into roadblocks? Can the greening of corporate practices dramatically shift the nature of the food system, or is it a niche strategy?"
Unprompted by anyone else, panelist Hal Hamilton from the Sustainable Food Lab -- a consortium of business, non profit and public organizations "working together to accelerate the shift of sustainable food from niche to mainstream" -- shined a laudatory spotlight on Sodexo. "Imperfect as they are," he said, "Sodexo is taking tremendous strides to embrace sustainability in their business principles."
But people in the audience were skeptical. During the time to ask questions, several conference participants argued that Sodexo's veneer of "sustainability" is hollow without meaningful respect for labor rights and fair wages. First, a middle-aged woman spoke with concern about sub-standard wages and labor conditions that food service workers may experience in many school cafeterias, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions that contract food services with Sodexo.
Then, a young man invited the Sodexo representatives who were present in the convention center to identify themselves. After Sodexo VP Wasserman raised his hand, the young man asked, with specific reference to the labor campaign of CIW tomato farmworkers targeting Sodexo, "What kind of responsibility does the CFSC organization and membership have to encourage a corporate sponsor of their conference to proceed with a just resolution to this dispute?"
In response, a panelist simply acknowledged, "It takes pressure from the outside along with a willingness to change from the inside in order to drive progress."
Sodexo pledges support but CIW calls for real action
With pressure indeed building from the outside -- and the clear knowledge that they could not hide from the controversy of a farmworker campaign targeting them even at the CFSC conference that they were sponsoring -- Sodexo chose to respond by reciting a conscientious-sounding statement to the participants gathered at the event.
On the afternoon of Sunday, October 11th, Sodexo VP Wasserman announced publicly from the conference podium -- to a captive audience of hundreds of attendees who were seated for lunch -- Sodexo's nominal willingness to "support a penny per pound increase in wages for Florida's tomato farmworkers and adopt a specific code of conduct for Florida tomato farmers." He added that "our discussions with CIW leadership has most frequently focused on how to turn an agreement in principle when no farmers are on board or few are on board into real change in Florida's tomato fields and enough farmers coming on board to help us serve 9 million people [acoss North America] a day.
But whether -- or how quickly -- these well-received words by Sodexo will translate into meaningful action remains an unresolved question. Two CIW activists -- including one with the solidarity group Just Harvest USA -- arrived at the CFSC conference on Monday, October 12th, to express their message demanding that Sodexo not delay in putting their words of principle into action.
And, in the meantime, CIW used their opportunity at the conference to educate and interact with hundreds of CFSC members.
Speaking in two conference workshops on Monday and Tuesday as well as to the entire CFSC assembly in a plenary speech on Tuesday morning, the CIW emphasized that now is, indeed, a critical moment when serious action is needed by corporate tomato buyers such as Sodexo to help construct a solid framework of accountability and oversight in the tomato fields. By adding its weight to the drive to recruit more tomato growers who agree to adhere to the CIW demands of a wage increase and an ethical code of conduct, Sodexo can help to successfully end the systematic human rights abuses and conditions of forced slavery that Florida's tomato farmworkers presently face, as well as provide them with the dignity and security of a minimum livable wage.
In his own plenary address, farmworker and CIW leader Gerardo Reyes Chávez replied directly to Sodexo's statement. "We are ready," he declared. "We have been ready for a long time. It is time for Sodexo to put their voice into action. Without concrete steps and a signed agreement with us, the campaign against them is going to continue. It is our hope as a community that Sodexo's comments are sincere, and that they will join Compass, Bon Appetit, and other large buyers of tomatoes who are working with us to end the harvest of shame in Florida." Hearing this, the room -- filled with hundreds of CFSC participants -- erupted into loud standing applause.
At this venue, however, under the glare of a grassroots community-based membership of sustainable food activists who generally have little patience for corporate impropriety and foot-dragging, Sodexo seemed unable or unwilling to follow through with any sort of authentic sign of commitment to demonstrate their good faith in terms of moving beyond words to actually achieve a substantive, legally binding agreement with Florida's tomato farmworkers.
Not only did Sodexo fail to use the 2009 CFSC conference as an opportunity to sign or announce a pact with CIW. Sodexo also declined to send even a single corporate representative to be present at either of CIW's two workshops, through which Sodexo might have furthered a respectful dialogue or at least learned more -- in living detail -- about the struggles, hopes and demands of the farmworkers. And the corporation failed to arrange even one face-face meeting with a CIW leader, despite the fact that that Sodexo representatives were frequently seen mingling with other CFSC participants in the halls of the event.
CFSC grassroots become engaged with farmworker struggle
Yet if for no other reason, the 2009 CFSC conference was historic by being the first time that farmworkers were granted the opportunity to speak to the entire gathering. "This is the first year that I know of that the labor issue has had a plenary place and has been brought up to this extent," said Maria Aguiar, the Director of Global Programs with Grassroots International, who introduced and facilitated the plenary. "Farmworkers were always sort of marginal [before at CFSC conferences] and hidden in the corners."
Thus, this CFSC conference broke new ground not only by facilitating the encounter with Sodexo of farmworker advocates who were able to put direct pressure on this multi-national corporation to respond publicly to their demands. This also represented the first time -- at a national CFSC venue, at least -- that grassroots practitioners and activists for community food security from across the country could not avoid paying attention to the scandal that conditions of human rights abuses, abject poverty, and slavery are still prevalent among farmworkers in the fields of Florida and, more or less, across the United States.
CFSC participants were vividly reminded that -- in no small part because farmworkers in the U.S. historically have been specifically and unfairly exempted from the federal right of workers to unionize -- it takes the heroic, innovative and unfinished efforts of hard-working non-union organizations such as the CIW and its allies in order to ensure that the "cheap" food that millions of Americans eat every day is not tainted with blood, misery and deaths of those who labor to harvest the crops.
For a number of CFSC participants, hearing about this 21st century reality caused -- or reinforced -- intense emotions.
"The history of myself as a consumer," said one woman who felt proud to see a new generation of farmworkers standing up for their rights, "was shaped by Cesar Chavez saying: DON'T BUY GRAPES. I have never bought grapes in a grocery store. Thirty years later, I can't buy grapes. And now I don't buy tomatoes. When I look at the food in a grocery store, I don't know how it got there and who grew it. I can't buy food when I don't know who grew it, and that is because of the work that you [the farmworkers] do. It's so important that this gets honored in our society ... and that we hear your voice and project your voice louder. It's such a proud history of struggling to make our country a better country, and we have come so far ... But we have so much farther to go ... There is no way in America that we can separate the history of our agriculture from the history of our Hispanic workers."
But for Mara Bacsujlaky, a sustainable communities consultant in Alaska, the presence of controversial corporations at the conference generated anger and disappointment. "I'm relatively new to this whole food issue and I'm not terribly familiar with the CFSC," she said, "but I am disturbed to see that Kaiser-Permanente is a sponsor. They were implicated in the dumping [of homeless patients in Los Angeles]. It disturbs me to see Starbucks coffee here. They may be Fair Trade, but Starbucks has the worst business practices and has run ... small coffee houses out of business. I don't know much about Sodexo, but now I have my strong suspicions. I have a long history in the environmental movement ... What we always had to fight against was the greenwashing of these corporations, and what I see here is way worse. It's so pervasive. And this is a great conference. I've learned an awful lot, but it's very flash. I would rather sit in some little podunk room. It finally came together when I realized who all is sponsoring this. So it's just counter-productive to what we're all here talking about, and I don't understand where the disconnect is."
Another participant articulated the possibility that Sodexo could lose its place at the CFSC conference if it does not sign an agreement with the CIW. "When the Sodexo Vice President spoke, the language he used twice was thanking CFSC for allowing them to be sponsors of the conference. So he might be a little conscious that we might just not want their money if they don't clean their act up," she said.
But for CIW, the hope remains that Sodexo "This is a great opportunity for all of us, because we know what needs to be done. Let's take this opportunity to help Sodexo to understand," said Chávez, "that this is not a situation of a PR campaign. It's good that they are trying to contribute by sponsoring events like this. But this is part of the problem too. This has been taken [by Sodexo] as a PR campaign -- trying to look good in front of people who are progressive and more open to new ideas. This not going to go away just because they are sponsoring an event like this."
Damara Luce, Director of Just Harvest USA, who spent years living and working with CIW in Florida, added that the issue of corporate sponsorship is a "very complex" question. "Over the years, many of CIW's campaign targets -- Subway, Chipotle -- have also given money to good causes like inner city gardens or community farms," she said. "We don't ever judge people's decisions about accepting money. But we do know that the Community Food Security Coalition itself can use can use their relationship with these corporations and the fact that they have accepted their money to put pressure on them. Please do send that letter or make that phone call. Other people have already been telling CIW, "Hey, we're going to let them know that we're really uncomfortable with this."
"That's what actually in the end is what pushes these corporations to change. Sponsoring these events is about their publicity and their bottom line. But at the same time, there are individuals in these corporations who do care about sustainability and who want to do the right thing. We need to push them to do it," said Luce
"Let's take the willingness of Sodexo to sponsor things like this and help them go forward to act on it," said Chávez.
Ethan Genauer is a freelance journalist and grassroots activist for food and environmental justice. When not on the road, he lives and farms in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of his blogs is http://nmyoungfarmers.wikidot.com.
Ian Mikusko
The Hunter College workers weren’t the only college cafeteria workers who had a big victory in the past several weeks. The University of Southern California food service workers, members of Unite Here Local 11, ratified a new contract on October 20.
The USC employees won wage increases of up to $2.45 per hour and upheld the Local 11 standard of free, full family medical coverage throughout the life of the contract. "With Unite Here we have a long tradition of organizing for strong contracts with big improvements, and this victory is just another example," said Alfredo Valle, a food server at USC for more than 25 years.
As was the case at Hunter College, this victory was not given to the workers; rather it was earned through action and a united workforce. In September, 80 food service workers took their demands to USC President Steven Sample—sending the USC administration a message that they were willing to fight for a good contract. Here are a couple brief videos from the USC workers with their reaction to the contract victory:
Kyle Schafer
Sorry to all of you longing for Stir It Up-dates from Chicago. Don't worry, though, we've been busy. As hopefully you all know, the Stir It Up Chicago mini-conference is just three days away! If you haven't registered, do so now!
Stir It Up mini-conference: Bringing Justice to Campus Food Service!
Saturday, November 7
12-5 pm
DePaul University (main campus in Lincoln Park neighborhood)
If you have questions, just shoot an email to Kyle Schafer at kschafer [at] unitehere.org.
Ian Mikusko
Last Friday brought good news, not only for the AVI workers at Hunter College, but for the AVI cafeteria workers at Sarah Lawrence College. AVI signed an agreement with UNITE HERE Local 100 guaranteeing that the cafeteria workers at Sarah Lawrence will be given a fair process deciding whether to form a union, and that their employer, AVI, will “take an approach of strict neutrality in the event the Union attempts to organize the Employees.”
This huge step in winning real improvements in these workers’ job conditions did not happen in a vacuum, however. Students and workers have been taking action to win this agreement since the school year began, culminating with several actions the day before AVI signed the agreement. On October 22 2009, a group of students placed calls to AVI President Anthony Payiavlas to tell him that students supported the workers’ efforts to unionize. Students and workers also paid a visit to the Sarah Lawrence College Vice President for Finance, John Bernson, to give the Sarah Lawrence the same message that they gave AVI. Here’s a video of the action:
