Campus dining employees in contract negotiations by Ben Abelson Contributing Writer While Campus Dining workers continue to engage in contract negotiations, which began over Winter break, Aramark is trying to make various changes, including reducing health insurance benefits. The contract expires every three years and must be re-negotiated. Representatives of the United States Labor Action Coalition (USLAC) have been assisting by building student awareness and support for the workers, according to USLAC representative Katie Halper ’03. The workers, members of the Local 217 chapter of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), “want to keep everything they’ve fought for,” said Halper. Recently, USLAC members have been petitioning students to support the workers and have posted flyers around campus listing cuts in worker benefits that Aramark has proposed. “Student support [for the workers] is really key,” said Halper. “It’s very effective. Once the flyers got put up, Aramark started making some new offers.” Disputes over worker health insurance remain at the forefront of the negotiations. “Right now our insurance is paid for [by Aramark] one hundred percent, and that’s what we’d like to maintain,” said Sue Silvestro, a Campus Dining worker and fifth Vice-President of Local 217. “A lot of us have family members with very, very serious illnesses.” These family members are provided care through the workers’ current health insurance. Not all insurance plans would provide complete coverage for family members. “We want very much to maintain Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, [our current insurance,] or something as good as that,” Silvestro said. It is standard for Connecticut HERE workers—Central Connecticut State University, University of Hartford, Southern Connecticut State University and Fairfield University—to have health insurance paid for by their employer, according to Halper. Campus Dining Services Director Sherwood Lincoln, an Aramark representative, disagreed. “Times have changed. Employees in most places generally share the cost of the premiums as it relates to health insurance… On this campus, other than our employees, they share 15% of it. It’s important to us to sign an agreement that we can afford to sign,” he said. “We’ve put a second proposal on the table which maintains the current program—the current vendor—which pretty much puts it in their hands.” Every possible health insurance plan is going to have its advantages and drawbacks, according to Lincoln. He stressed that Aramark was not going to overlook the workers’ health care needs. “It’s unfair to say that there is an HMO out there that’s not going to allow an employee to take care of a family member or themselves with a serious medical condition. I don’t think that that is reality and I don’t think that there is anyway that that could possibly be true,” said Lincoln. “What we’ve proposed to this point… doesn’t reduce the level of [health] benefits that these employees currently have.” Yet, according to Silvestro, some Aramark proposals have included plans that do not offer comparable service. “They [Aramark] wanted to switch [the workers] to Medspan Health Insurance,” said Halper. “One worker’s husband has multiple sclerosis… another worker’s son had cancer… [Medspan] wouldn’t cover their care.” While Aramark claims that it has been losing money at the University in the last few years, the company will not show their financial records to the union representatives, according to Halper, and the workers do not generally believe that Aramark is losing money. “It’s not that they’re losing money, their profit is not what they projected. So what, one of them won’t drive [his/her] Mercedes this week, or buy a summer home, just for us to live at the basic level?” said Irene Jackson, a Campus Dining worker and steward (union representative) for Local 217. According to Lincoln, however, Aramark is indeed losing money. “In the last two years, mostly as a result of the health care increases, we have not been profitable at this account,” he said. Frustration is running high among the workers, according to Halper. “What is so hard?” asked Jackson. “It ain’t like we’re ever gonna get rich working here...what is so bad about we wanting to maintain a decent living? I know there’s things we’re not going to be able to get that we ask for in that contract, but there’s a lot of things they want to take away.” Although a breakdown of the negotiations does not appear imminent, the possibility of a future strike cannot be ruled out, according to Silvestro and Jackson. “I have worked here for 14 years, and in 14 years I’ve never once considered striking, but I will tell you this: If we don’t have health insurance as good as ours… I very definitely will be out in front of this building with a sign,” Silvestro said. Lincoln appeared confident that the contract would be resolved by the final cut-off date of Feb. 28. “We are in negotiations, and the end result of this has not been determined… Some very extreme proposals have come up from both sides, I’ll admit to that. It’s very early in the process, and we have two more weeks of negotiations to get this thing wrapped up,” said Lincoln. “We’ve always settled, this account has never gone past the due date,” said Lincoln. “To the union’s credit, they’ve always gotten the contract ratified.”

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