2008 Woodie Awards
Sodexho Employees Frustrated at Union
Jeff Latzer
Issue date: 2/23/05 Section: News
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Negotiations between their Unite HERE (Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees) union and Sodexho administrators are ongoing, yet it may be months before an agreement is reached. Cafeteria workers are dismayed at the failure of their union to address their concerns. For years, cafeteria employees say, the union has worked only to placate employees with seniority while neglecting such needs as higher pay, fair benefits and "night differential"-increased wages for nighttime employees, something almost universally accepted in the service industry.
The last time a contract was negotiated for cafeteria employees, their union staged a walkout-a dramatic last resort to secure higher pay. "The problem," said Plato's Cave supervisor Greg Thornton "is they were fighting for a forty-cent raise! They raised union dues higher than that in the same year."
Four years later, the forty cents per-hour which was finally agreed to is now the only raise current workers have seen since. Since then, as Thornton pointed out, there has been a $1.10-per hour yearly raise in dues all union members must pay, effectively nullifying the raise by increases in union fees. Also, due to the seasonal schedule of cafeteria employees, cafeteria workers must pay the union for membership even in the summer months when they are not working at the college.
Despite the behest of cafeteria employees, current negotiations hardly hold a brighter future. "They're negotiating for a similarly tiny pay raise, and instead they're fighting for things we don't need," says cafeteria chef James Glover. "They're fighting for more sick days when we don't need more sick days. We need night differential and better health coverage, not a few more days that we can take off per year."
Eric Sassnet, the general manager of Sodexho at Manhattan College refused to comment for this article, instead suggesting comments would only be made by the operations manager, Dennis McCoskey. "I feel sorry for them, I really do," McCoskey said. "It's out of our hands. We negotiate with the representatives from their union. So it's up to them to listen to worker problems and secure more money for the workers."