The Encuentro: A Weekend in Immokalee

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 16:23

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to be in Immokalee, Florida at the Student Farmworker Alliance’s (SFA) annual gathering, the Encuentro.   In addition to meeting great people and hearing the actions that student are planning across the country—students affiliated with great organizations like United Students Against Sweatshops, Student Labor Action Project, Slow Food USA, Real Food Challenge and United Student for Fair Trade were all in attendance—I got firsthand accounts on how students have fought, and continue to fight, in solidarity with the farmworkers who regularly work for sub-poverty wages in the tomato fields of Florida.

 
For those that don’t know, SFA is the student affiliate organization of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). CIW is a member based, and member-driven organization of low-wage workers—primarily immigrant workers who work for large agricultural corporations. Here’s more about the CIW’s history, from their website:
 
 
We began organizing in 1993 as a small group of workers meeting weekly in a room borrowed from a local church to discuss how to better our community and our lives. In a relatively short time we have managed to bring about significant, concrete change.
 
Combining three community-wide work stoppages with intense public pressure - including an unprecedented month-long hunger strike by six of our members in 1998 and an historic 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000 - our early organizing ended over 20 years of declining wages in the tomato industry.
 
By 1998 we had won industry-wide raises of 13-25% (translating into several million dollars annually for the community in increased wages) and a new-found political and social respect from the outside world.
 
Since then, CIW has continued to fight for better conditions and wages for farmworkers, in large part through the Campaign for Fair Food, which has called on purchasers of Florida tomatoes to “take responsibility for human rights abuses in the fields where its produce is grown and picked.”   In solidarity with the CIW, university students have played a big part in getting food industry giants like Taco Bell, Burger King and McDonalds to pay a penny more per pound for the tomatoes they purchase from Florida’s growers. I recommend this PBS video (scroll down to interview with CIW leader Lucas Benitez) for those interested in learning more.
 
And the struggle continues! Students and community allies spent much of the weekend discussing actions for the on-going Dine with Dignity campaign—the campaign to get campus food service companies like Sodexo and Aramark to adopt the ‘penny-per-pound’ tomato purchasing policy, and to establish a code of conduct—and farmworker oversight—on working conditions in the fields of large growers.
 
There were many great moments at the Encuentro. We learned about the history of slave labor on Florida farms (that, in some instances, continues today), we got a tour of the neighborhoods where many Immokalee workers live, we received workshops in research and campus organizing, and we had group discussions of how we could work in solidarity with the CIW when we got back to our communities. My favorite part, though, was when CIW leader, Lucas Benitez, presented the Coalition’s history and philosophy to the group. 
 
His presentation included a story about a crew of workers that was told that they would have to work through their lunch break one day.   Instead of accepting this order sitting down, one of the workers spoke up and refused to relinquish his break. When the crew boss responded, asking who it was who had protested, the worker answered by raising his membership card, stating that he was a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and that he was going to take lunch. When the crew leader pressed him further, the rest of the CIW members who were in the crew raised their cards in solidarity with the first person who had spoken up. The boss relented and the workers got lunch.
 
This story was particularly moving to me because, as a representative of a union and a believer in the power of the labor movement, I understand how important it is to be organized. And even though, due to restrictive labor laws that govern farmworkers, the CIW members do not have the right to form a union, they have found ways to build up their organization—and sense of collective identity—in its absence.  
 
So I headed by to my apartment in New York on Sunday impressed. Not only with the farmworkers who have struggled for years to win many victories over the years, but with the students I met, who committed to spend their time and energy to fight in solidarity with the farmworkers on their university campus.   
 
 
 

Video: Workers Rally at Hunter College Cafeteria

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Thu, 09/17/2009 - 10:57

While politicians in Washington quarrel over health care reform, Unite Here Local 100 members at the Hunter College cafeteria took the future of their health coverage into their own hands last Thursday. AVI Foodsystems, a food service company that took over the food service contract at Hunter from Sodexo this fall, has thus far failed to provide the health care coverage or pension plan that the Hunter College cafeteria workers received from their previous employer.   


In response to AVI’s refusal to sign a contract that provides these benefits, workers organized a union meeting in the middle of the Hunter College main cafeteria….in the middle of the lunch hour rush.   As you can see below in the videos, food service workers stopped serving lunch at the cafeteria at Hunter College and rallied for health benefits, pension and a reasonable wage increase.   The cafeteria managers, as you can imagine, were not too happy.   I’ll keep you all up to date as events unfold in these workers’ fight for health benefits and a pension.   

 

 

If you live in the New York area and want to get involved, contact us and we'll let you know how you can take action in solidarity with these workers.

Q&A / A Conversation Between A Worker and Student At DePaul University

Submitted by Ashley Weger on Tue, 09/15/2009 - 11:22
 
[Stir It Up editor’s note: Recently, Ashley Weger, a senior at DePaul University in Chicago, met with Quiendolyn “Q” Wilkens, a DePaul food service worker active with UNITE HERE Local 1. Below, Ashley reflects on her conversation with Q.]

As I wait for Q at the café of my university’s student center, I begin to reflect about what has led to my presence there.  I know the intended content of our conversation: we are going to talk labor, organizing.  There are deeper inquiries, however, that I feel compelled to ask myself: why this morning, with this person, in this place?  Part of what attracted me to DePaul was its Vincentian mission: a commitment to social justice and service, a compulsion to stand on the side of the oppressed, the poor, workers, immigrants, the disenfranchised.  It is the pedagogical and historical foundation of our university, for which I hold profound respect.  I begin to think of the numerous student communities (intellectual, spiritual, community service, political, etc.) in which I have engaged, in attempts to embody the impulse I have towards imagining that a different world is possible, and working to create the conditions in which it can manifest itself.

And yet, I sit drinking my cup of Earl Grey while that world seems increasingly impossible: the crisis of capitalism ever apparent, no adequate progressive response presents itself from any of the activism and advocacy in which I have immersed myself.  Summer in Chicago has been marked by layoffs and a demand of concessions to be made by working people.  It is clear that the recession has scared people, who, like Q suggests, are more concerned with securing jobs than with securing rights, benefits and respect.  The climate has made many voices timid, but I think of how it has contributed to developing my own.  It made undeniable the reality that there is a battle to be fought, and it is one that will require a seemingly overwhelming reconceptualization of the labor needed (intellectual, conversational, organizational and otherwise) to form a working class movement, in the United States and internationally.  And as much as I appreciate and admire DePaul’s mission, it has failed to deliver a labor policy for our campus workers that reflects the impulses of social justice.  A wage of $9.25 an hour hardly speaks to the tenets of solidarity and dignity Catholic social teaching promotes.  As a student, worker, intellectual and organizer, I can not simply stand aside - I must ask myself soberly what can be done amidst an environment where the only steps being taken appear to be backwards.  How can we struggle for more?

My conversation with Q contributes to this sentiment.  She talks about her job, and those of her co-workers, as means of survival, not self-determined career paths.  And yet, she does not devalue her labor: she demands respect, for herself and for her peers.  While wages and benefits are clearly insufficient at present, the concept of self-respect resonates as the motivation to secure these material improvements.  Q talks about her own sense of empowerment in becoming more actively involved with the union, how standing up changed her perception of economics, politics and possibility.  I am inspired at how she epitomizes leadership for the working class: “reach one, teach one” is no empty promise, but rather, the only possible avenue for building power and confidence amongst workers.  The question remains: how do we utilize Q’s audacity to mobilize our university community, workers and students, professors and staff?   First, we must honestly assess the dismal political state we are organizing within, and work to transform it.  How is this done?  It is through education, outreach, relationship building, reflection, standing firm.  I share Q’s sentiment: we have to let those in power know that “they fucked with the wrong person.”  This is not the time to make concessions, but rather, an opportunity to present ourselves as a force to be reckoned with.

Photo of Quiendolyn Wilkens speaking at the UNITE HERE International Convention in June 2009.

 

Does Your School Need to Learn Public Contracting 101?

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Tue, 09/08/2009 - 15:08

 

It appears Alabama A&M needs a refresher course. A state audit report released on Friday, August 21 found that Alabama A&M violated state law in 2006 when it granted food service company ARAMARK a four-year extension without putting the contract up for competitive bid. 

If you go to a public university, similar laws may apply to how your school handles its food service contracting process.  If you’re paying more attention to the rules than Alabama A&M administrators were, it could be a chance to impact campus food service for the better.  Last year, students at University of New Mexico used the fact that its food service contract was out to bid to highlight social justice issues. The University chose a new contractor (you can see the contract in our contract database).
 
So how does public contracting work?
 
If a public body wants to procure goods or services, it usually must go through a public bidding process. The bidding process involves publicly issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) or an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN)‚ an invitation for companies to bid for the business. Companies may then submit closed bids which are opened on a date selected by the public body, in our case, the university. After reviewing the bids and negotiating with the companies, the university awards the bid to the company of its choosing. (Private universities do not have to conform to public bidding laws, but they may follow a similar process.)
 
The entire public bidding process offers an excellent opportunity for students to keep track of their university’s food service contract because public contracts -- as well as the RFPs and other related documents -- are generally subject to requests under the state’s public records law. If you want to learn more about the relationship between food service giants like ARAMARK and your university, what better way than to read the contract itself?
 
If you do want to submit a public records act request, take a look at our sample and our Public Records Act instruction page. You can also go to this Public Records Act request generator site to help you with the wording. Even if you attend a private school, you may want to ask your university dining services for the contract directly – there is always a chance they’ll give it to you. 
 
If you get your contract, send it our way and we can add it to our contract database.
 
Photo from andercismo flikr account via Creative Commons.

 

University of Houston Students for Fair Trade

Submitted by Tim OBrien on Thu, 08/13/2009 - 16:02

Several weeks ago a post from University of Houston PhD candidate Tim OBrien, appeared on Stir It Up.  He wrote about the food service related campaigns his group, UH Students for Fair Trade, were planning in the coming year.  Here's a little bit of background on how UH SFT organized to become a force at the University of Houston.
 
A graduate student founded SFT because he wanted to buy a cup of coffee that was not made under sweatshop conditions. In less than a month all the corporate run retail coffee outlets on the UH campus were serving one blend of fair trade certified coffee. SFT’s consistently successful campaign is a good guide for student activists to consider when launching or continuing their own campaigns for fair food.
 
The slogan “Educate, Agitate, Organize” adorns a t-shirt available at the AFL-CIO online union shop.  That phrase also sums up SFT’s campaign in a nutshell. SFT’s first action was to cover the campus with informational flyers about working conditions on coffee farms. SFT then agitated the UH administration and Aramark, their food service provider. That resulted in an immediate but partial victory that got some fair trade coffee on campus.
 
Next SFT worked towards organizing students to build the group up from its founding member. Weekly tabling sessions were held in highly trafficked areas of campus in order to speak one on one with prospective members. SFT wrote and published editorials and the founding member got elected to the student government to fight for change within the system. SFT sought allies and build coalitions off campus as well.
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Summer of Transparency ’09: Transparent Since 2009

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 17:57

 

We’re over a month into the summer of 2009. But Summer of Transparency ’09 (since 2009) has just begun! 

If you’ve spent some time perusing our website, you may have already come across our database of food service contracts. Our goal is to add to this database in an effort to expose the relationship between universities and food service companies. Thus is the essence of Stir It Up and thus is the essence of the Summer of Transparency ’09.

But that’s not all(!!!). What exactly is the point of the Summer of Transparency ’09 you may ask (besides an excuse to show pretty pictures of the sun)? The answer is, that for students preparing to launch (or continue) food service campaigns in the fall, the summer is a perfect time to accumulate information about the food service operation at your university. Getting this information over the summer allows you to hit the ground running when school is back in session. Though campuses often resemble ghost-towns over the summer, the administrators who have access to the documents and information that you need are still working (vacations aside).

The key document to uncovering information about campus food service is the food service contract. When food service is contracted out to companies like Aramark, Chartwells or Sodexo, a contract is negotiated between the two entities as the legal basis for their relationship. Obtaining this document will shed light on the financial relationship between the university and the company, the expiration of the contract and other interesting information. Several other interesting documents that your university may have on file are profit-and-loss statements, RFP proposals and financial audits of the food service company. 

How do you get these documents? First you have to identify the university administrator from whom to request the information. Unfortunately there isn’t a universal standard as to who to ask. Fortunately even if you ask the wrong person that person should be able to direct you to the appropriate person. Here’s a guide to important food service decision-makers and, for those who don't hit the link, here are the titles of some administrators who may be able to help you: Director of Purchasing/Procurement, University Counsel and Vice President of Finance/Business. 

The second step is to send a request. Sometimes an informal request will yield the information that you are looking for. In other instances a formal letter (hard copy or email) is required. At state institutions, the public is entitled to most university documents (including the food service contract). Here is a guide to filing a public records request.  

At private universities, the situation is trickier. The public does not have the legal right to view or obtain copies of such documents. There is a strong moral argument for students having a right to such documents, however. Not only are your tuition dollars supporting the institution itself, your money is directly supporting the entire food service operation through meal plan money and retail food purchases.   Though it may seem like common sense that students should have access to the documents of an institution that they pay for and is there to service them, administrators at your school may not share this opinion. So if you attend a private school be prepared for (though don’t necessarily expect) a struggle. Stir It Up will document students’ experiences trying to obtain these documents as accounts are relayed.   

We will be adding to our contract database all summer and beyond (Fall of Transparency ’09 will begin in a more timely fashion). So please continue to send us contracts so that we can share it with the public.   Summer of Transparency ’09….commence! 
 
Photo from law_keven flikr account via Creative Commons

 

UH Students for Fair Trade: The Fight for Fair Food

Submitted by Tim OBrien on Tue, 07/14/2009 - 16:19

Today we have a guest post from University of Houston PhD candidate Tim O’Brien who has been fighting for social justice in UH campus food service since 2006.

The University of Houston Students for Fair Trade (SFT) has been fighting to bring social justice to their corporate ruled campus for over three years. In February 2006 there were no fair trade certified products available on the University of Houston (UH) campus. At the time progressive student activism was non-existent at UH, a commuter school with over 34,000 students.

 
Currently SFT is working on three campaigns. The first is their long time overall goal to make UH an all fair trade campus, the second is to get a living wage for Aramark workers and the third is the fair food campaign in solidarity with the Student Farmworker's Alliance/Coalition of Immokalee Workers current food service providers campaign.
 
Recently SFT met with the campus business services manager to start a dialog about a living wage for campus food service workers and address the poverty in the supply chain issue as related to the tomatoes being served on campus. Unfortunately the manager tried her old duck and dodge tactic instead of addressing SFT’s concerns. The manager, Emily Messa, claimed that an SFT member had put one her employees in fear of their life. When SFT members asked Ms. Messa is she called the police, Messa said no.
 
After that meeting SFT escalated their campaign with a house protest at university business service manager Messa’s house. We recruited some allies from the Revolution Club, the Houston Peace and Justice Center, the Black Panther Party, and the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement. Early one Saturday morning in June a little over twenty of us carpooled out to a suburb of Houston where Messa lives. We held signs and listened to speeches and got everyone’s attention. We passed out flyers to all the neighboring houses and curious onlookers. Ms. Messa never came outside but her husband and her neighbor did. Eventually five police cars came and after one very polite law enforcement officer checked our sound permit, they left but not before one policeman said he wished his children were there to see the first amendment in action.
 
Check out this youtube video for a little taste of the protest.
 

Sodexo at the University of Louisville: Mandatory meal plans....for commuters?

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 10:50

Mandatory meal plans for on-campus residents are not always popular amongst students, but, contrary to popular belief, there is one good thing about such meal plans: they often beget creativity.  At Virginia Tech University, a program has been established that gives the money left on  meal plans at the end of the semester to an organization that helps feed those in need.  At Northwestern University, where Sodexo is the food service contractor, students created an online survey to help you figure out how much money you waste per week based on your meal plan and how many meals you eat—as of May 27th, 2009, 670 ‘readers’ reported that they had wasted a total of $11,940 in a typical week. 

Unfortunately for students who would prefer to have a choice about the food that they eat and buy, mandatory meals are a common feature of campus life.  Until recently, however, the only mandatory meal plans that I had encountered had been for campus residents…

…which is why this news[1] from the University of Louisville took me by surprise.  The University of Louisville (where the campus food service provider is Sodexo) is going to make $175 per semester meal plans mandatory for commuter students.  Yes…commuter students…not first year students…not campus residents…mandatory meal plans for students who live off campus.   Commuter students are going to be forced to pay $175 for food they may or may not want to eat.  The new meal plan policy will start this fall.

In addition to making meal plans mandatory for commuter students, the 2008 contract with Sodexo makes meals mandatory for all campus residents (as opposed to only first years) and increases the price for first year residents without kitchens to $1165 for ’09-’10 from $995 (an increase to $1,460 is scheduled for ’10-’11).  (You can view the Sodexo-University of Louisville contract, which lays out this new policy in Attachment D on page 32, here.)  

A number of students and their families are concerned over the commuter aspect of the new meal plan policy.  Shelly Howe the mother of a University of Louisville student expressed the crux of the matter to the Courier-Journal:  “It’s the principle of it.  I am going to pay for something my son is never going to use.”   

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The Expiration: A story of food service contracts in four parts

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 14:42

The Intro (A shameless attempt at self-promotion)  

It's that time of year again on college campuses.  Students are studying for finals, drinking too much coffee, and, of course, checking Stir It Up obsessively for updates.  Meanwhile, often behind closed doors, university administrators around the country are hammering out agreements with companies that will determine the nature of their university's food service for the year(s) to come.  

The expiration of a contract or the coming up of a renewal option is a unique opportunity for students to gain a powerful role in determining which company comes to campus and how that company is going to act as a campus citizen.  


The examples  (I knew New Jersey and Kansas had something in common)

That's the situation at Drew University, where the current contract with Sodexo has not been renewed, and a dining service committee is considering whether to bring Sodexo back under a revised contract or to bring in a new company.  Gourmet Dining, Chartwells, Parkhurst and Aramark are the four other companies under consideration.   The Committee has set July 1st as their goal for reaching an agreement.  

It was also the situation at Washburn University, where students recently protested over their lack of input in the agreement that was worked out with Chartwells.  Here is what The Topeka Capital-Journal reported:

Phil Norris, a member of the Washburn Student Government Association, stood on a partition between several booths in the Union Market dining area and called on students to make their voices heard to the university's administration.  At issue is a 10-year contract approved March 20 by the Washburn University Board of Regents with Chartwells Food Services.  "We want students to have a voice on campus on issues that are important to them," Norris said. "Right now, they don't feel like they have a voice on campus."

It came out later that the unrest over the contract was partially due to miscommunication.  What was understood by many students to be a ten year contract extension, was really the addition of five one-year renewal options (on top of five existing one-year options from the original contract) which is much less binding.  Though the contract could extend for ten years, the possibility of ending the contract earlier than that by declining to take a renewal option does indeed exist.   This of course, does not undermine the legitimacy of the response of the students, whose relative exclusion from the process remains an issue.

The point (He has to have a point doesn't he?)

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Bringing home the bacon: Sustainability, hog farming and the swine flu

Submitted by Amelia Kalant on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 16:38

The power of smell to induce memories, to return to us things that are long past: the scent of baking blueberry muffins on a cool fall day, crisp fallen leaves as the weather turns cooler. Smells help us recall where we’ve been, who we’ve been. I became a vegetarian years ago, and no longer remember the taste of most meat, but the smell of cooking bacon produces a lingering nostalgia every time I catch a whiff.

But, as I read the news the past few days, I was reminded of a different pig-related odor that surrounds some places in the transformed countryside, a smell so thick that it is visible. Hogs. Lots of em. So many of them crowded into a ridiculously cramped place that the stench permeates the air for miles, the pollution from the industrial farms extends even farther, and the power of the hog lobby appears to know no bounds--including national ones. It’s no secret—or hasn’t been for years that industrial hog farming abuses the animals by crowding them into tiny pens, shooting them full of antibiotics to prevent diseases (and not coincidentally spurring on those wonderful antibiotic resistant viruses), but also sickens farm workers and residents of nearby communities. 

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