Ian Mikusko
I posted a link about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' most recent victory in the news section, but it deserves its own post. Yesterday it was announced the Bon Appetit Management Company, a division of Compass Group (which also owns Chartwells) agreed to boycott Florida tomatoes if growers do not agree to improve conditions and increase pay for farmworkers. Here's a summary of the purchasing code that Bon Appetit agreed to abide by from a Washington Post article:
The code demands that growers pay the extra penny a pound immediately, and directly to the workers. It also calls for suppliers to pay a negotiated "fair minimum wage," an hourly rate higher than the federal minimum wage, which the company says does not take into account the uncertainty and difficult conditions of farm labor.
The official press release lives here.
In other CIW-related news, a resolution at Wichita State, calling for Sodexo and the University administration to support CIW's Campaign for Fair Foods, passed 30-0 at a student government meeting last night. Congratulations to SFA, CIW and the students and workers whose campaign efforts led to both victories.
Ian Mikusko
In 2001 Yale students noticed something odd about their campus food service. The university had just contracted out food service operations in an effort to cut costs. The contractor abandoned the local providers that the University had always used in favor of a giant multi-national distribution company. The resulting decrease in quality was not unexpected. What did come as a surprise was that the price of the food actually went up.
Recently, in an article about "kickbacks" investigative journalist Lucy Komisar shed some light on a cause of rising food prices in some university cafeterias. The entire article is recommended reading but, in brief, the report documents the wide-spread practice of food providers obtaining hidden rebates from food suppliers - ones that are not passed on or even reported to the client (e.g. a school or university). The rebate system is "endemic to the industry,” and for Sodexo, these rebates reportedly total many millions of dollars annually. According to the article:
[$100,000 is] just a taste of the hundreds of millions of dollars of "rebates"--or kickbacks from suppliers-- that Sodexo, a $20 billion-a-year global leader in the food and facility management industry, has taken while operating cafeterias and other facilities for schools, hospitals, universities, government agencies, the military and private companies across the country, according to evidence provided by whistleblowers and internal company documents.
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The kickback practice may cause some food suppliers to inflate the prices that they charge the company; if they have to give a $5 rebate on what would be a $30 product under normal circumstances, they instead have to charge $35. In a typical cost-plus contract, the rebates "are not deducted from what the food-service company charges clients", so these inflated prices are then passed onto the customer.
According to Komisar, what appear to be internal emails and documents, seemingly show that Sodexo has asked suppliers for two sets of invoices: one with the rebates listed for itself, and one without, for the clients.
Beyond the inflated prices, the rebate system may impact a university’s ability to make responsible purchasing decisions.
1.) There can be a financial incentive to limit local or organic purchasing. As described in the article: "Food service companies buy products from vendors that pay bigger rebates rather than those that offer cheaper, locally grown or high quality food."
2.) The need to raise prices to compensate for the companies' demand for rebates affects small local suppliers more than large ones. Larger suppliers may have a high enough margin that they can get away with not raising the prices of their products to the same extent. A small New England produce supplier described the system to Komisar as pushing items off the menu and resulting in frozen items being substituted for the small supplier's fresh produce.
Thus, the rebate system seemingly has an inverse relationship with creating the sustainable food systems advocated by great organizations like Real Food Challenge and Slow Food on Campus.
For the reasons described above, your university may not know the full extent of the rebates that your campus food service provider receives. It is worth asking your university administration about rebates, however. There is precedent for students demanding full disclose from food service companies on rebates received. In 1998 the Faculty Student Association at SUNY Stony Brook made it a requirement that the university's next food service contractor document revenues obtained from bulk-purchasing rebates.
Image by AMagill via Flickr
Mike Butler
Today we have a guest post from University of New Mexico student Mike Butler. Mike and his fellow UNM students are fighting to make sure their campus food service is both sustainable and in line with their belief in social justice.
The Fair Trade Initiative at the University of New Mexico (UNM) has a three-pronged campaign. Like most college/student labor groups, we are working in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers on the ‘Dine With Dignity’ Campaign to demand that food service providers, like Chartwells at our campus, pays one penny more per pound for tomatoes they purchase. We also want to see an increase in food that is Fair Trade certified. With this in mind we are pointing out that “green” and “organic” do not mean fair. However, the third part of our campaign is to see an increase in organic and local food in the cafeteria.
To promote both fair trade food and the “Dine with Dignity” campaign, we have been passing out fliers to go along with fair trade coffee almost every Wednesday on campus. We are also setting up a meeting with Chartwells to discuss what we want to see on our campus. And we are going to be showing food and labor related films the week of May Day to promote the campaign.
What we are doing as students is reshaping our University. We are taking things into our own hands and using our voices to demand justice not just for ourselves but also for workers. We believe that this is going to be beneficial for us because in 10 years we want to have a local food shelf, a unionized food labor force, and a student body that is powerful politically.
Ian Mikusko
A short while ago I came upon a strange entry on the Sodexo Careers blog. The blogger, who remains anonymous, seems to have an unhealthy obsession with a certain French food service company:
Last night, after dinner I sat down to watch the evening (National) news just in time to catch President Obama's speech to troops at Camp Victory outside of Baghdad. During his surprise visit to Iraq yesterday, he thanked the troops for their service and called this a period of "transition." I couldn't help but to think about Sodexo.
"Thinking 'bout you, Sodexo"
The blogger goes on:
There were so many parts to President Obama's speech to the troops that brought my thoughts back to Sodexo.
People say President Obama is inspiring. I just had no idea this was the kind of inspiration that they were talking about. We now know that that Obama is capable of inspiring at least one individual to daydream about Sodexo and that's pretty impressive. A serious question remains, however: How can the students who go to Sodexo schools make Sodexo institute the kind of change that we can believe in?
Image by marcn via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
Ian Mikusko
As companies put out Earth Day press releases documenting the sanctity of their sustainability programs, students and faculty at the University of Illinois have been busy instituting real policies and practices to "reduce the carbon footprint of dining services."
While a new university goes trayless seemingly every day, the University of Illinois is incorporating a broad array of initiatives into their sustainability program. Though these initiatives include
Current and future efforts made by University Housing Dining Services include: local purchasing, campus farm program, campus composting, recycling and waste reduction initiatives. Local purchasing is being defined by any produced or processed items within a three hour radius of Champaign-Urbana. Meats, dairy products, coffee, tea, breads, fruits, vegetables, and other grocery items are being purchased locally and served in the dining halls.
As Illinois' expansive sustainability initiatives exhibit, there is far more to creating a sustainable dining program than getting rid of trays, clever branding and issuing press releases. U of I, of course, is not the only university that is placing greater emphasis on purchasing local produce and operating a composting program; it is only one of many great examples of universities where students are shifting their university's food policies to reflect student values.
Ian Mikusko
One of the Stir it Up projects that I’m most excited about is our database of food service contracts. Students deserve the right to view their university’s food service contract. With contracts posted online for the public to see, more students will have quick access to important contractual information.
Today, thanks to the efforts of Mike Butler of the UNM Fair Trade Initiative, I've added the University of New Mexico food service contract to the database. The University of New Mexico’s contract with Chartwells began this school-year after a successful student campaign to find a new contractor. Mike and others on campus are now making sure that they hold Chartwells accountable to the UNM students. One of their first steps in doing so was to learn more about Chartwells' contract with UNM. We’ll have more from the UNM student campaign in the coming weeks.
If you are interested in obtaining your University's food service contract, this guide should help you get started.
UPDATE (4/20/09): Florida State University contract with ARAMARK added.
UPDATE (4/21/09: Western Illinois University contract with Sodexo added.
Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianarn/2092712432/, Creative Commons Share ALike
Dominique Aulisio
Today we have a guest post from UCF student Dominique Aulisio who explains how she and her fellow students are planning to raise awareness about the ramifications of UCF's contracting decisions.
At UCF we are building a Student Labor Action Project chapter to support workers who are organizing for change against the injustices they face. As students, we see the need to support the workers who serve us in our university as well as workers throughout the world who are affected by the business contracts our university holds.
For example, UCF contracts with Aramark to run our cafeteria and many of the restaurants on campus. Farmworkers in Florida who pick the tomatoes that come to our cafeteria receive poverty wages and suffer abuses in the workplace. According to a federal prosecutor in Florida, in the most extreme instances, the abuse of these workers constitutes modern day slavery. Right now the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is looking to college campuses, including ours, asking Aramark to use their power as a large buyer of tomatoes to change these conditions. In the past, the CIW has won agreements to ensure better wages and working conditions with Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, Whole Foods, and Subway, due in part to students pressuring the companies on their campuses. During the Taco Bell campaign, students and administration at 22 schools cut contracts or even denied Taco Bell sponsorship.<!--break-->
UCF also contracts with Coca-Cola for vending machines and pouring rights in restaurants and the cafeteria. We are raising awareness on campus about the Campaign Against Coca-Cola with the union SINAL TRAINAL in Colombia, whose union workers have faced severe repression in Coca-Cola plants. Through informative events on campus, we are also letting students, faculty, and staff know about violence that has been perpetrated against Coca-Cola bottling plant employees. As Coca-Cola continues to deny responsibility, the Campaign Against Coca-Cola claims that Coke turned a blind eye to this violence.
At the same time, we will be fighting to make sure workers in our cafeteria who cook, cashier and clean receive wages that cover basic bills in line with Orlando's cost of living. We support a livable wage for all the workers who serve us on our campus. We are working toward a day when our administration and the companies we do business with show their support for decent wages and dignity as well, both in words and practice.
Molly Shearer
A couple of weeks ago one of the major college food service contractors, put out a press release comparing the top 10 campus "food trends" of 2009 to those of 1989. Intended to highlight the increasing sophistication of student diners, the contrasts are decidedly unsubtle: The #1 spot on the 2009 list went to "Locally-grown fruits and veggies," where the students of 1989's top priority is listed as simply "Fruit and Cottage Cheese Plate." Where their predecessors wanted "Chicken Chop Suey," today's students are expecting "Vietnamese Pho" and eschewing the "Egg, Bacon and Cheese English Muffin" in favor of "Green Tea and Pomegranate Smoothies."
This is not to say there isn't a significant reality behind this comparison. Student food movements devoted to best taste, best health and best practices have drawn a great deal of attention to ethical and quality issues in campus dining. Students in 2009 seem to value their food in more complex and complete ways than they have in the past.
Well, at the very least, they're paying a lot more for it.<!--break-->
The standard undergraduate meal plan at Harvard cost $4982 this year. In 1987, it cost $2036. Adjusting for inflation, that means today's Harvard student is paying over 30% more than her Chop-Suey-loving predecessor[1]. A student at Florida State paid 24% more for a 2009 standard meal plan than he would have for the 1990 version. Nationally, between 1989 and 2009, room and board rates increased 35% at private institutions and 50% at public ones.
Given the lack of an effective outcry for major price reductions and a return to 1989's "Chicken Nuggets" and "Taco Bar," it seems reasonable to assume that these price increases are to some extent reflecting (or at least being off-set by) an increased overall investment in the quality of student dining. Flashy menu items can only be part of the story, though. While students may be paying more and expecting more from their cafeterias than they did 20 years ago, how much has changed on the other side of the counter? Is food service work being valued any differently?
Adjusted for inflation, the average wage in the food service industry has increased just 8% since 1990. The "food trends" press release characterizes today's college diners as worldly individuals whose "creative palates" demand a higher level of "culinary literacy" from those who are feeding them, yet, relative to the average US hourly income, the pay of food service workers at the end of 2008 remained exactly where it was at the beginning of 1990: 48% below average.
So, as board rates climb ever higher and dining hall menus move toward Nepalese petit-fours and cage-free caviar, it remains to be seen whether the way we value our food will come to include the way we value the people who make it.
[1] Even with last year's spike in food prices, the increase in the CPI since the late '80s is greater than the change in food prices over the same period.
Ian Mikusko
Clean energy and green jobs were the topics at hand yesterday as thousands of young people rallied to combat climate change in Washington DC. I was there on the front lawn of the Capitol Building with thousands of other activists and I can testify that, despite a rare DC snowstorm, the energy and enthusiasm of the people there was awesome. The rally came at the culmination of Powershift '09, a four day youth conference organized by Energy Action Coalition focusing on clean energy solutions to the economic and environmental problems that the world is facing. It's Getting Hot In Here has full coverage of the conference including youtube clips of some of the speeches.
Meanwhile on February 27th, the same day that the conference began, Joe Biden convened the first meeting of the White House Middle Class Task Force. He echoed the same sentiment expressed at the Powershift conference: that creating green jobs is a vital component of the current economic recovery formula. In an op-ed piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer, published in advance of the meeting, Biden said:
"According to the Council of Economic Advisers, green jobs pay 10 to 20 percent more than other jobs. They also are more likely to be union jobs. Building a new power grid, manufacturing solar panels, weatherizing homes and office buildings, and renovating schools are just a few of the ways to create high-quality green jobs that strengthen the foundation of this country."
Higher paying. Union. And green.<!--break--> In the creation of green jobs one can see the mutual interest between environmental groups and labor organizations in building an economy based on clean energy. After years of corporations fostering an attitude of mistrust between two strong progressive movements, it's great to see the natural alliance between labor and environment being realized. I've also seen how these barriers are getting broken down in the fight to make campus food service more sustainable.
With a union, workers have a say in their workplace, and thus have the ability to work with students and speak up to their managers about ways in which the operation could be more sustainable. With a union, workers have the opportunity for increased training in how to make sure that sustainability in the cafeteria they work for is more than just a buzzword. With a union, jobs are higher paying and workers have the ability to live their lives in sustainable fashion.
Thus, when I saw the signs and heard the cries for 'green jobs' at the Powershift rally, I thought about the great potential for progressive students of all stripes to get involved in their campus food service and to fight for a comprehensive sustainability that includes both workers and the environment.
Ian Mikusko
Trayless dining: a concept that you may already be very familiar with if you are A.) currently enrolled in a university that has adopted the policy or if B.) like me, you spend hours every day reading university newspaper articles about campus food service (this is not something I would admit to if I were you, it's not exactly a 'cool' hobby).
For the benefit of those of you who do neither of the above, trayless dining is the newest fad in university dining. The concept is pretty self-explanatory: cafeteria meals are served without trays. The result is less waste from food, electricity, water and cleaning supplies; and a more sustainable dining experience. The reduction of waste, of course, also results in reduced cost for the dining service provider.
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Schools all over the country, with contracted and non-contracted food service operations, are adopting the program. Some are going trayless one or two days a week, and others have gone completely trayless. It's happening and it's happening quickly. But by going trayless are food service companies and universities merely following the Walmart model that seems to tie sustainability with saving money?
This is an issue that warrants further analysis, and I'll come back to it in future posts. My initial thought is that trayless dining is a step in the right direction (though it's certainly better when it comes it comes from the student body). It's a sustainable initiative that can be won without a long a difficult fight (since it saves money on costs), but it's still important to challenge dining service operations to take further steps towards becoming more sustainable, both in terms of the environment and worker compensation.
If you have any interesting stories or thoughts regarding trayless dining, send over an email. If not, be sure to stay tuned for our next exploration into trayless dining: Trays of Our Lives II, The Life and Times of TrayShaun Prince.1 (The submission of 'tray' puns, for the record, is highly encouraged and each and every entry will be carefully reviewed by our highly trained pun committee.)
1. Title subject to change
