Pomona College settled a labor practice dispute with Workers for Justice (WFJ) through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week, agreeing to revise its policy on student-worker communication in the dining halls. The settlement, which states that the college does not admit any guilt,...
Employees and advocates of Warehouse Workers United (WWU), a group aiming to unionize warehouse workers in the Inland Empire, spoke at Pitzer on Monday about the injustices they suffer at the workplace and their latest legal efforts against their employers. Workers For Justice (WFJ) leader...
After the tumultuous events of last semester, an eerie calm has settled over the Pomona College campus. Aside from Frank Dining Hall’s closure on the weekends, there is not much evidence to attest to the firing of 17 college employees and the unprecedented protests, debates, and meetings that...
Members of the Pomona College Board of Trustees held a series of three meetings with faculty, current and former dining services employees, and students on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the recent employment authorization reviews that resulted in the termination of 17 college employees on Dec....
For three years I have supported Workers For Justice (WFJ) and tried to help by going to protests, boycotting the dining halls, and wearing WFJ buttons and orange armbands. The recent events have created an even stronger need for WFJ, but it is rather disappointing the way certain actions have...
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) informed Pomona College this week that it will issue a formal complaint over two claims associated with unfair labor practice charges that were made on behalf of workers in Pomona's dining halls earlier this semester, according to a statement issued by...
Pomona College fired 17 staff members yesterday, after those employees were unable to meet the college’s deadline for submitting updated work authorization documents. The terminations, which most directly affected dining services employees, marked the end of a three-week verification process that...
To the Editor:As a Pomona College alumnus, as well as a recent two-year Visiting Assistant Professor in the Politics Department, I feel compelled to respond to the Board of Trustees’ recent letter to the Pomona College community regarding efforts to verify the legal status of faculty, students,...
The following letter was produced on Tuesday, Nov. 22, by a group of Pomona College students in response to the college's ongoing review of the employment authorization documents of 84 college employees. For more information on the document reviews, please see stories in News.Dear Pomona College...
Dear Editor,There seems to have been a little uproar over my piece on the WFJ protest last week. I say "seems" because no one voiced their concerns directly to me. Instead, I had to hear about how I am ignorant, made people want to vomit, and value my sleep over the workers' livelihoods on the...
On Nov. 7, Pomona College issued letters to 84 students, faculty, and staff members requesting that they schedule a meeting with the Office of Human Resources before Nov. 11 regarding incomplete or deficient employment authorization documents. These employees were told to submit proper...
Dear Editor,I have become aware of the current tense atmosphere at Pomona regarding unionization efforts of the dining hall staff at the college. Jeff Zalesin's fine article touches on the important history of union efforts and points out that getting tough on documentation is a tried and true...
We talk a lot about community at Pomona. As a residential liberal arts college, we’re in a unique position to build a democratic political system that can be accountable to our community. The extent of student and faculty involvement in Pomona's governance is evidence of our investment in this...
A Review of the ReviewsPresident David Oxtoby visited Senate this week to discuss the employment authorization document reviews currently taking place on campus. According to Oxtoby, the Board of Trustees received an allegation from an employee of Pomona College (but not a member of the...
At a faculty meeting Nov. 16, Pomona College President David Oxtoby pointed to fears of potential involvement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and reiterated that the college must re-verify the work authorization documents of 84 college employees before Dec. 1. The Pomona College...
Clank! Clank! Clank! That is what I and many others in Clark V and III were rudely awoken by at six in the morning on Tuesday. It was not the harshest way I’ve ever been yanked from slumber, but boy, was it annoying. Luckily, it only lasted a few minutes and I was groggily able to fall back...
The Workers for Justice movement is currently stymied because the workers’ organizing committee wants the administration to remain neutral during the vote for unionization, which the administration refuses to accept. From the workers’ standpoint, neutrality is crucial for a fair union vote free...
Pomona College enacted an outstanding policy over the summer that limits the interactions between dining hall employees and non-employees while employees are on duty or on break, spurring complaints from students and staff that the administration is prohibiting dialogue in the workplace. In...
Pomona College began checking the work authorization documents of 84 of its employees, provoking widespread outrage from many students, professors, and staff members. Supporters of Workers for Justice (WFJ), the pro-union group of Pomona dining hall staff, began demonstrating before dawn on...
The debate over fair treatment of Pomona’s food service employees has been going on for over a decade. In 1999, when all dining hall workers at the Claremont Colleges were employed by the massive food service provider ARAMARK, there were allegations of improper labor practices, according to a...
Monday morning at breakfast, I came across a flyer distributed by the Workers for Justice (WFJ) highlighting recent changes in Pomona’s health-care plan for staff. The flyer claimed that the reduction in monthly payments for the two-party and family plans was a huge improvement, and it credited...
Pomona College employees earning less than $52,000 per year will be required to pay less than half as much in monthly health care insurance premiums in 2012 as they have in past years, the school told staff members last Friday.Pomona Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson said the...
An event held in honor of the nationally-recognized Food Day on Pomona’s Walker Beach on Monday, Oct. 24, provided a forum for some of Pomona’s dining service employees to express their frustration with staffing issues related to the college’s sustainable food efforts, and to reiterate their...
The Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) Senate voted last week to form a subcommittee dedicated to investigating and informing students about the current status of the debate over unionization for Pomona's dining hall workers. According to ASPC senators, the subcommittee is an attempt to...
The pro-union group of Pomona College dining hall workers, Workers For Justice (WFJ), filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the summer, claiming the school is implementing an anti-union campaign. These charges come at a time when negotiations...
Pomona's Student organization Workers for Justice (WFJ) recently welcomed two first-years, Louie Lemus PO ’15 and Naomi Bosch PO ’15, into their ranks. Dormmates in Mudd, Lemus and Bosch will be two of several 5C freshmen joining the push for the Pomona dining hall worker unionization.Lemus, of...
Negotiations to organize a unionization vote resumed April 25 after a three-month hiatus at a meeting between Workers for Justice (WFJ) and the Pomona administration. The resumed negotiations come on the heels of an announcement to dining hall staff over spring break that the college would allow...
Longtime Pomona Professors Jerry Irish and Monique Saigal will be retiring at the end of this year.Saigal, who teaches in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has taught at Pomona since 1965. The daughter of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, she spent part of her childhood...
The Claremont Colleges' senior classes want to bring home the bacon. A ceramic piggy bank named Ellen is the prize awarded to the senior class that achieves the highest participation rate for senior donations. For the past five years running, Pitzer has won the contest. Last year, 99.6...
I know I'm not the only one thinking it, so I'll just come out and say it: What the hell?! Bob Robinson kicked a chair, and you filed a report with the police? Are you insane?Please tell me that this is just a big joke so that I can maintain my delusion that all Pomona students have at...
The nearly month-long investigation into an incident last month involving three students and a vice president has been closed and no charges are being pressed, according to an email President David Oxtoby sent to the student body March 31. The investigation was in response to three...
President Oxtoby’s e-mail response to the investigation of workplace misconduct by Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Campus Services Bob Robinson raises the question: as students, how do we come to understand an event about which we’re told conflicting stories?To be clear:...
Does a culture of happiness have deleterious effects on student-to-student sexual respect? Happiness and harassment appear to be diametrically opposed, but I would like to argue that a culture of happiness entrenches types of harassment that proliferate in gagging silence. Before I continue,...
Three student volunteers for Workers for Justice (WFJ) filed a report with Campus Safety and the Claremont Police Department (CPD) early this week alleging that Pomona’s Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Campus Services Bob Robinson displayed an act of “public...
As detailed on the front page of this week’s issue, dining service worker Emilio Flores was recently fired by Pomona College. According to the administration, allegations were brought against him, a full investigation was conducted, and the administration subsequently had no choice but to...
Members and supporters of the pro-union group of dining hall employees Workers for Justice (WFJ) marched to Pomona Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson’s office Mar. 1 to voice their concern over the Feb. 18 firing of dining hall worker Emilio Flores Arellano. “We have seen a...
Frank and Frary dining halls were more crowded with patrons than expected on Saturday, Feb. 19, after the pro-union group of Pomona College dining employees, Workers for Justice (WFJ), decided to call off their previous plans to boycott the dining halls. After a year of stalemated efforts to...
In an effort to end negotiations and move closer toward a vote on unionization, members and supporters of Workers for Justice (WFJ), the pro-union group of Pomona College dining hall employees, are organizing a boycott of Pomona’s dining halls this Saturday, Feb. 19, during Family...
Pomona College Dining Services announced a new scheduling system, guaranteed full-time employment for all dining employees this summer, and clarified the system for taking sick leave in its first quarterly meeting Feb. 11 in Frank dining hall. Workers have long complained about the scheduling...
This upcoming weekend, Pomona hosts its annual celebration of that time-honored junior high school tradition: showing your parents where you learn things! Not only does the college provide opportunities for our loving guardians to meet professors, attend faculty lectures, and sit in on actual...
Tomorrow, Pomona College students and their visiting families will face a choice, and that choice will not be easy. Workers for Justice (WFJ), a pro-union coalition of Pomona’s food service workers, has chosen Saturday to orchestrate a boycott of Frank and Frary in order to show support...
According to the flyers that appeared around campus last weekend, Workers for Justice (WFJ) and their supporters are sponsoring a boycott of the Pomona dining halls this Saturday. Coincidentally, this weekend is also Family Weekend. The coincidence begs the question: was this boycott planned in...
The recent termination of dining hall worker and former Workers for Justice (WFJ) leader Maria Garcia on Jan. 20 has put further strains on the relationship between administration and pro-union workers. According to Francisco Garcia, Garcia’s brother and a Pomona dining employee, Maria...
Lending academic expertise to the Workers for Justice movement, Gordon Lafer, associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center and former Senior Policy Advisor on Labor in the U.S. House of Representatives, contextualized some of the key issues that have...
According to Pomona administration, labor issues were not the driving force in the decision to terminate Sodexo’s contract. Instead, operational factors (e.g. quality of food, cleanliness, responsiveness to management) played a much larger role. We have no reason to doubt the...
Pomona College took further steps last week to transition its dining hall management to self-operation, following the college’s announcement that its contract with Sodexo will be terminated in January.Two applicants were reviewed last week for the position of General Manager of the dining...
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...
Pomona College will terminate its contract with food management provider Sodexo on Jan. 18, 2011, Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson told students in a Nov. 10 e-mail. The termination ends a 10-year relationship between Sodexo and the college. “Instead of relying on a third-party...
Pomona College students are participating in launching events for the new “Daring Minds” campaign, taking place this fall on the East and West Coasts. Approximately eight to 10 Pomona sophomores, juniors, and seniors attend each event. “Campaign Pomona: Daring Minds,”...
An e-mail sent out to a large number of alumni the week of Oct. 11 called for a pledge campaign to withhold donations to Pomona College in response to the college’s dispute with Workers for Justice, drawing a rebuke from the college administration.Pomona sent out an e-mail addressed to the...
Workers for Justice held a brief rally on the steps of Frary Dining Hall Thursday. During the dining hall workers’ 4:00 p.m. break, students and staff came together for half an hour in support of labor peace. Mariachi Serrano de Claremont played several songs to open the rally....
Pomona College students and trustees met Oct. 15 to discuss internships, career planning, and life after college at the 12th annual Trustee-Student Retreat. Although the retreat fell on the first night of fall break, turnout was high. “Over 80 students [registered], and more than that...
In the seven months since the Workers for Justice campaign began, I’ve often felt uncertain about my participation as a student organizer. From the beginning, different aspects of the campaign have rubbed me the wrong way: the secretive nature of the original student group, the way certain...
Many Pomona College alumni are pledging to withhold donations to the college until the dining hall workers and the administration have signed a labor peace agreement. At press time, more than 150 alumni pledges had been made public. According to Peter Kunhs PO ’98, who has helped raise...
Representatives from the pro-unionization group of Pomona College dining hall workers, Workers for Justice (WFJ), met with college administrators on Monday to discuss the possibility of using a “vote-by-mail” system for unionization, which they proposed on May 12.Under the new system,...
A group of Pomona College dining hall workers, accompanied by several students, gathered outside of Frary Dining Hall in a Workers for Justice demonstration last Friday. After the participants gathered around the Frary fountain, workers and students alike took up signs and loudspeakers, heading...
In a past article, I made clear my position on the card check versus secret ballot debate. For the purposes of this article, we shall cast aside the debate over whether or not the Workers for Justice (WFJ) group has the right goal in mind. Instead, we shall briefly examine whether or not...
Dining hall workers called for a student boycott of dinner at Frank and Frary dining halls on Wednesday in support of their push for a card check neutrality agreement on unionization.The boycott was organized by the Workers for Justice (WFJ), a pro-union coalition of workers, and supported by...
Tonight, I ate at Frary. Earlier this week, a number of my friends expressed interest in breaking the boycott. However, when six o’clock came around today, lo and behold, suddenly they “had to be at a meeting” or “were supposed to go to a special off-campus dinner.” ...
Many of the students here know about those pesky bias-related incident reports. They cluttered my inbox last year and became a joke for the most part. Luckily, this year they are less frequent and actually cover serious incidents, for the most part. Even so, the Foundation for Individual Rights...
We have a language problem on campus. I don’t mean the “language problem” your mom lectured you about, nor do I mean an inability to understand a foreign language. We have a problem choosing our words.For example, I recently read an e-mail from Workers for Justice, regarding the...
Karen Sisson, Pomona College Administration and College Community,First, we would like to express our thanks to Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson and the administration of Pomona College for giving us the opportunity to speak freely and explain before the entire community the reasons why...
Pro-union food service workers asked for formal talks between Pomona College staff and administration Wednesday night, a day after the college’s first public discussion on a union vote.The statement, signed by a group that named itself the Independent Labor Organization of Pomona College...
Scores of demonstrators marched past Pomona College President David Oxtoby’s house on Mar. 24 in an attempt to force progress in a dead-locked discussion about a unionization proposal by the college’s food-service workers.The march began after about 125 professors, staff, students and...
If the debate over dining hall worker unionization is to result in any tangible progress, parties on both sides of the issue need to drop vague rhetoric and move toward concrete action. Rather than talking through blog posts and cc’d emails, the parties must come together at some point to...
Name GameASPC President Jed Cullen ’10 called the meting to order at 5:05 p.m., after which each member introduced him- or herself, due to the number of guests present. Going over names was completely necessary for the guests—all five of them—who might have needed to use them,...
Students in Solidarity with Workers for Justice (SSWJ) held a rally on Pomona College’s Marston Quadrangle on Saturday afternoon. The group is asking the college to sign an agreement that would allow food-service employees to vote on whether or not to form a union.The organizers are...
If the debate over dining hall worker unionization is to result in any tangible progress, parties on both sides of the issue need to drop vague rhetoric and move toward concrete action. Rather than talking through blog posts and cc’d emails, the parties must come together at some point to...
Pomona College is unlikely to allow its food-service workers to hold a “card-check” vote to form a union, President David Oxtoby said Tuesday Mar. 2.Many of the dining hall workers petitioned the president this week to allow them to hold the vote on whether to form a food service...
As detailed in this week’s front-page article, Pomona President David Oxtoby has stated that the college is unlikely to allow its food-service workers the “card-check” vote to form a union that workers and student activists are advocating. This response follows a petition,...
Pomona College is unlikely to allow its food-service workers to hold a “card-check” vote to form a union, President David Oxtoby said Tuesday.Many of the dining hall workers petitioned the president this week to allow them to hold the vote on whether to form a food-service...