Students joined Aramark workers outside the Campus Center Thursday to light candles, sing, and march in support of Wesleyan food service worker benefits. Aramarks employees at Wesleyan are members of the Local 217 union, which represents food service workers from seven local universities. The union is currently engaged in renegotiating their contracts with Aramark, a process that occurs every three years.
“Every three years we have to act in self defense,” said Steve Mathews, a representative from the Union. “We have to work to protect our families or health insurance and our living wage.”
Earl Baskerville, president of Local 217, began the vigil by thanking the assembled crowd and citing increased wages and better health insurance as the union’s chief concern.
Local 217 is a chapter of UNITE HERE, a national union that represents textile, industrial, hotel and restaurant employees. It currently has a membership of almost half a million workers, representing Aramark workers nationwide.
“Wesleyan foodservice used to be Saga and then they got bought out by Marriot,” said Pat Cotella, a Wesleyan food service worker for over 32 years. “[Marriott] was a people company. Aramark doesn’t know how to treat its workers. I’ve been working for long enough that I have money, but I’m concerned with hospitalization. All we really want is not to have anything taken away during renegotiation, to go back on what we have now.”
Following remarks by Aramark employees, the crowd marched to President Bennet’s house and then Mocon chanting “We will overcome.”
“Most of us have worked with Aramark for 2-3 years,” said Kris Williams ’06, one of the students who spoke in defense of the workers. “These people feel like family to us. That’s why we’re here. It is extremely difficulty to get health compensation working for Aramark. I think the students here are sympathetic, but it’s frustrating the way the administration keeps dealing with Aramark.”
Workers expressed frustration with Aramark’s new healthcare policies.
“Our primary concern is the maintenance of the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance that we have now,” said Sue Silvestro, the regional vice president of 217. “What Armark is trying to offer us is an inferior plan.”
According to Silvestro, under the proposed plan workers and their families with a serious illness will have much larger co-pays with every visit to the hospital. The same new co-pay would apply for workers requiring hospitalization during pregnancy.
“Aramark hates that we have a union here,” said Jeff Hill, a chef at Mocon who has worked in dining services for 25 years. “It’s the nature of the system. They try and take things away and we try and better ourselves. What we have to do now is make sure during the renegotiation that we don’t lose any of our health benefits. A lot of people here get laid off for 4-5 months a year when the students aren’t at school. One of the changes in the new plan would half the health benefits workers get during this time. That’s what we’re fighting against.”
Hill worked to unionize Wesleyan workers in the early 1980s.
Most attendees agreed that the vigil was a success and stressed the importance of communication between students, Aramark employees, and the Administration. Hill ended the vigil by saying that he was grateful for the students who showed up to support the workers. In all, about sixty students and twenty employees were in attendance.
“Without the help of the students the union would never have gotten this far,” he said. “The students played a large part in helping us to accomplish the changes we have.
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