In recent days, the circumstances surrounding the Oct. 28 firing of Summerfields cashier Claudia Hill have become the subject of increasing inquiries from the UNITE-HERE Local 217, the dining workers union.

Hill and union representative Len Nalencz believe that the firing was a retaliatory measure aimed at Hill’s husband, Jeff Hill, a union steward who has worked at Wesleyan for 28 years and vocal critic of Bon Appetit’s management practices.

Two days after Mrs. Hill was fired, Mr. Hill’s job as chef on the third floor Daniel Family Commons was terminated and he has since taken a cooking position on the second floor.

Mrs. Hill says that she was given no reason for her firing and has been repeatedly blocked in her search to find out. Having worked in various food services for 30 years, she says, there wasn’t much she could have done wrong on the job.

“What can you do wrong in a cashier’s job besides not getting along with the students?” Hill said. “I was great at that because I am a mother of six anyway. I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Joao Esteves, the manager at Summerfields who was responsible for firing Hill, declined to comment.

Bon Appetit Resident District Manager Delmar Crim, however, says that the firing had nothing to do with Mrs. Hill’s abilities. Instead, he said, the company was seeking to downsize at Summerfields and that the move made practical business sense.

“We were rich with employees and her services weren’t any longer needed,” Crim said. “Maybe when I was 10 years old I would have done something stupid like fire someone’s spouse when I didn’t get along with that person, but I’m about four levels above that at this point.”

Crim did say that Mrs. Hill’s non-union status had something to do with her termination, however. The dining contract states that an employee must work 60 days to attain eligibility for union membership. If Mrs. Hill, who had worked at Summerfields for 50 days, had worked 10 more days, she would have been eligible for union membership, making firing her much more difficult.

“That was certainly part of it,” Crim said.

Mrs. Hill, however, thinks her firing had more to do with her husband than managers have let on. Over the summer, Mr. Hill helped organize 68 union workers, who walked to Mr. Crim’s door and demanded to know why their hours and benefits were being cut. Since then, Mr. Hill has been the primary spokesman for the union workers regarding issues with the new dining services.

“[Bon Appetit] wants to give us a different [insurance] plan through their own companies,” he said in a May 7 interview. “For them to say that nonchalantly across the table is bullshit and I told them that it was bullshit.”

Mr. Hill and Mr. Crim have also clashed over more personal issues. In June, Mr. Hill’s first cook position was eliminated. The company has also stalled in giving him $600 of back pay, he says.

“There were several tiffs between Jeff and management,” Mrs. Hill said.

Mrs. Hill believes that the tension came to a head on Friday, Oct. 26, when she left Crim a phone message detailing how Bon Appetit’s administrative practices had been putting excessive pressure on her husband, which was beginning to affect her life at home. Mrs. Hill also told Crim said that she was contemplating talking to his superiors at Bon Appétit if he did not respond. Two days later, Mrs. Hill was fired from Summerfields.

Although Crim prefers to keep the content of the message private and maintains that it had no connection with the firing, Mrs. Hill isn’t so sure. She believes the message angered Crim, who she thinks consequently ordered for her dismissal. The termination of Mr. Hill’s third floor chef position two days later only confirmed Mrs. Hill’s suspicions that her husband was being sent an unspoken message.

“It’s retaliation towards Jeff,” she said. “They can’t touch him because he’s a 28-year veteran. They can just take me out.”

Crim says that Mr. Hill was moved because more labor was required in the second floor marketplace, where there is much higher traffic than the third floor commons. Retaliation had nothing to do with it, he said.

“The level of business didn’t warrant the amount of labor we were using so it made good business sense to reconfigure the labor,” Crim said.

Now, the leaders of the workers’ union, with their eyes on February contract negotiations, are using the Hills’ saga as a new cause celebre. At a question-and-answer session with roughly 40 receptive students on Tuesday, the Hills were introduced and presented as living proof of Bon Appétit’s aversion to abiding by the contract.

Previously, Sandy Baik, a WeShop employee whose hours were decreased—causing her to temporarily lose her health insurance—was the most visible character in the Union’s case against Bon Appétit. Baik has since added more hours to her schedule, making her eligible for health insurance once again.

While private negotiations continue, the Union hopes that its four filed grievances will be taken seriously. Although they can’t legally take any action on behalf of Mrs. Hill because she was not yet a union member, Nalencz suggested at the meeting that the Union is ready to operate outside of the contract in light of what they see as Bon Appetit’s continued disregard for the same contract.

As the rhetoric continues to escalate and the February contract negotiations approach, a more public conflict between the two entities seems highly plausible.