Editor,

The following is an open letter to the Senate:

Thank you for your response to issues of the Claremont Colleges’ food service workers. I understand that your recommendation for the present is that the Worker Support Committee bring individual abuses to the attention of Armark management and that you will attempt to create a permanent sub-committee of the five-college senate dedicated to continuing this work. While I am honored by your trust in our ability to have such a key role in this process of overeseeing working conditions, I do not believe that this is the right solution.

Such a committee would not hold any power over the food service vendor. Social pressure alone will be insufficient to change the policies of any subcontractor, and the committee would have no real financial leverage. Moreover, the amount of work required both to maintain close communication with workers and management and to effectively resolve problems would require posts on this committee to be full-time paid positions.

Even more important than such logistics is the fact that your proposed solution would rely on students to be the voice of workers in worker-management relations. This is a reality we find completely unacceptable. Students cannot solve the problems of workers for them. Fortunately, many workers are ready to step forward to organize themselves so that they might represent their own interests when dealing with management. They are asking that their legal right to organize in a space free from intimidation be upheld. In addition, they ask that should a majority of workers vote to represent themselves in the form of a union through an increasingly common, legal method known as card check, that such a union be recognized by their employer as a legitimate bargaining unit. Workers are asking nothing more than that their legal right to organize be upheld and that they be allowed to speak for themselves. In response to their wishes as well as to intimidation in the work place, the Worker Support Committee and a body of faculty and workers have submitted a neutrality agreement to both Aramark and the college presidents. This agreement would ideally be signed by Aramark.

While we appreciate your efforts, we ask that you respect the workers’ legal right to organize and to speak for themselves. By supporting these two basic principles we can ensure that workers’ complaints will be heard and their problems resolved. As we are both ultimately interested in respecting the needs of workers, I hope that we can agree to respect workers’ right to speak for themselves. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Meryl Haydock ‘01