Pomona College’s decision to terminate its contract with food management provider Sodexo has provoked mixed reactions from those concerned about labor relations in Pomona’s dining halls. Some predict improved communication between workers and administrators, while others question the administration’s motives in light of ongoing unionization efforts by Workers for Justice (WFJ).
Starting in January, dining hall managers will be employed directly by Pomona for the first time since 1972, and the college is now in the process of hiring new personnel to fill the positions of general manager, catering manager, executive chef, sous-chefs, and assistant managers, though the structure of management will not change drastically. Bob Robinson, Assistant Vice President for Facilities and Campus Services, said current Sodexo managers will be allowed to apply for the new positions but would receive no “distinct advantages.”
Margie McKenna, Assistant Director of Campus Services, added that the search committee for the new general manager included two dining hall staff members.
Last Friday, Frary Dining Hall staff submitted a petition, signed by 27 workers, asking the administration to retain current Sodexo manager Hector Castillo.
Parties disagree on what this change means Some workers believe it will be easier to communicate with the administration once outside management is removed.
“I think it’s going to be a lot better,” Frank Dining Hall cook and WFJ leader Benny Avina said of communication between workers and the administration. “There’s not going to be any excuses. If they’re doing something, we’re going to know directly from them.”
However, other workers have expressed concern that the timing of the termination—several months before the college’s one-year contract extension with Sodexo was set to expire—may be an attempt to obstruct or distract from unionization efforts.
“Honestly, I wasn’t too thrilled that Sodexo is going to leave,” said Dontae Towns, a cook at Frary. “I feel like Pomona’s probably looking for more control over us than they already have.”
Claire Cahen PO ’11, a volunteer for WFJ, said some workers suspect the administration of using the management change to prevent unionization.
“There is fear that the new managers will be hired specifically for union-busting,” Cahen said. “It could also be a thinly-veiled attempt to appear responsive to workers’ demands, but there have been rumors of them getting rid of Sodexo for years, so it’s not a complete surprise. What’s the issue is the timing.”
Robinson said unionization was not a major factor in the decision to fire Sodexo.
“We didn’t take [the unionization effort] into account because we were on a track to improve working conditions and improve opportunities and create pretty much a world-class program of campus services,” he said.
Robinson added that his department had received a list of complaints from WFJ in July 2009 and had resolved every issue except the workers’ demand for guaranteed 12-month employment.
Miguel Tinker-Salas, professor of History and Chicano/a Studies, said he was skeptical of the claim that terminating the college’s relationship with Sodexo was not related to unionization efforts. He pointed out that the current situation is similar to the one that arose a decade ago, when the 5Cs collectively fired food service provider ARAMARK and Pomona hired its dining hall staff as employees of the college amid active unionization efforts.
“There’s an eerie similarity between the change that was recently announced…and the change that occurred in 1999,” Tinker-Salas said. “Either there is an extreme level of coincidence, or one is led to believe that the labor issue was part of the decision-making process.”
Tinker-Salas said he was not prepared to predict how the change in management would affect working conditions in the dining halls, but he was confident that the college community would perceive a link between labor issues and the firing of Sodexo.
“It will be read as an effort to address some of the concerns of the workers without fully addressing the larger issue of workers deciding whether they want to unionize,” he said of the firing.
Tinker-Salas added that the unionization effort is unlikely to disappear as a result of the management change.
“It didn’t go away in ’99, and there’s no indication that it’s going to go away [now],” he said.
Avina, who has worked in Pomona’s dining halls since before the firing of ARAMARK, predicted that unionization efforts will continue even though the workers “expect good changes” to come from college-employed management.
“Right now, I don’t hear any of the guys [saying] that they want to quit the union [effort],” Avina said.
Workers and administration: Communication breakdown The administration has been considering the shift to college-employed food management for almost two years, according to Pomona President David Oxtoby. Dining hall workers said that the administration had not directly consulted them about the decision.
“It’s worrisome to me that college administrators are willing to arbitrate this and make a decision about it without talking to workers,” said WFJ volunteer Sam Gordon PO ’11. “[Oxtoby] and other high-up administrators are so physically removed. They don’t often eat in the dining halls, they probably don’t have personal relationships with the dining hall workers. It’s easy, when you don’t interact with them, when you haven’t heard their stories, to think of them as employees, which is only part of their story.”
Some workers said they fear the administration’s decision not to consult them is a sign that the relationship will not change, but others were not bothered. Several workers said they were not surprised that the administration did not consult them.
“It wouldn’t have done any good [if we’d had a voice in the decision] anyway because they have the authority, the power,” said a dining hall worker who wished to remain anonymous.
Others have had concerns about the lack of communication between administrators or the general manager and workers.
“I have no place to go if I get fired,” the dining hall worker said. “A lot of people stay quiet because they don’t want to get fired.”
Several past instances illustrate that the administration, managers, and workers are often not engaged in effective communiation.
Last spring, after he was approached by workers complaining that they were pressured to wear WFJ support pins and that workers had showed up at their house on weekends, Robinson held a 10-minute meeting in which he told the employees they could not pressure co-workers to show support for the unionization effort. Robinson said that several workers thought he was telling them they could not talk about unionization while in the workplace.
“This was never our intention,” Robinson said. “It was that they needed to be respectful of each other.”
In late July, workers and administration held a joint meeting with their respective legal representatives. In the meeting, the college’s attorney was asked what managers should be able to say to workers in the time leading up to the election, to which he replied, “Whatever they want.” However, managers cannot legally make direct threats or offer bribes to prevent unionization.
“At the time of the comment, there was a spirited debate going on at the table, so the back and forth did not necessarily have meaning,” said Robinson, who was present at the meeting. “A better choice of words could have been used, but that wasn’t what was meant. I think he was trying to say that the management has a perspective of unionization based on experience and their own backgrounds that might be valuable to the staff.”
Robinson said a large part of communication issues is the language barrier.
“I think a big issue is verbal communication—understanding each other because of language,” he said. “There are a lot of nuances in how you say something and how it’s translated.”
Robinson and McKenna are learning Spanish to improve direct communication with workers, Robinson said. They are looking to hire native Spanish-speaking managers and improve English skills in the workers.
One problem, Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson said, is that because the administrators who are directly involved are new, workers don’t know if the changes the administration makes will have staying power. She, Robinson, and McKenna were all hired within the past two and a half years.
“Part of the unfortunate nature of the timing is that we haven’t had enough time to develop a track record that helps engender trust and confidence of the employees,” Sisson said.
Sisson said she doesn’t interact personally with the workers as much as she would like.
“I feel like if they talked to us more, then more people would trust the things that they tell you,” Towns said. “If they came more, and if they seem like they’re more genuine all the time, then it’d be easier to trust what they say.”
If a union is created, good communication will be key to its success, Professor of Economics Fernando Lozano said.
“What is really important, and what we’re not having right now, is we are having no dialogue between the workers and the administration,” Lozano said. “[The removal of Sodexo] is one less degree of separation.”
