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.

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.

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.

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.

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."  

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

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.

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.

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.

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.