Food Service Workers at the University of Washington
by Yasmine Tarhouni
(June 2002)
How often do you catch the name pinned to the shirt of the person who serves
you a plate of teriyaki in the Husky Union Building? How often do you have a
conversation with the cashier at By George? For the average student or
faculty member, the answer to both of those questions is “Not very often.”
The presence of food workers at the University of Washington is marked by
invisibility in the realm of the “real” campus—the highly visible world of
classes, office hours, faculty meetings, student organizations, guest
speakers and residence hall life. Like custodians, office staff, librarians
and many other workers essential for the operation of a large university,
food workers labor in an ironic juxtaposition of omnipresence and
invisibility. On one hand, a glance at the student newspaper, The Daily,
reveals dialogues preoccupied with student politics, local environmental
issues, and life in the Greek system. Rare is the article that mentions food
service or food workers. Yet students make up the majority of those served
by Housing and Food Services, the University of Washington’s department for
residence hall and on campus-dining whose mission is, “To
provide quality food at reasonable prices to our guests in a clean, safe,
attractive environment, while providing exemplary service to students,
faculty, staff and visitors of the University of Washington.”[1]
If you put down the paper and take another look you’ll see that food service
workers are everywhere—working in one of the 19 food outlets on campus, in
the kitchens, on the frontline. The rhythm of work begins early. In the
shadowy dawn of each workday – while most students are either fast asleep or
pulling all-nighters in the confines of Odegaard library – parking lots all
over campus begin to fill with workers arriving for their 6am shift.
Battered carpools drive up behind residence halls and behind the Husky Union
Building (HUB). Other workers alight from busses, crossing the dim and empty
streets to start the first work of the day.
Who are these workers, how long have they been here, and how are they
unionized? What are their hours? What has drawn them to the University, and,
especially for those who have worked here 20 plus years, what has made them
stay?
Classified food service workers at UW have been organized under Local 1488
of the Washington Federation of State Employees since 1978.[2]
Yet most people who work for Housing and Food services remain non-union.
This is because only classified staff is part of the union—the rest of the
workers fall into non-unionized student, hourly, or professional labor. As I
began to look for the lives of the average unionized food service worker I
quickly discovered that the lives of union members are intricately bound
with the many other classifications of workers who toil alongside them. Only
by examining both sides is it possible to understand how the union can
protect some workers while seemingly undermining the livelihood of others.
I found that the vast majority of workers at HFS are not classified
staff. Middle management consists of managers and manager/chefs, all of whom
are non-unionized professional staff. Under the professionals is a varying
amount of classified staff members, usually around 10, in the residence
halls cafeterias. Then there is the large numbers of part time student and
hourly workers. Student workers must work less than 20 hours per week.
Hourly workers work anywhere from 5 to 40 hours per week, but under
Washington State Law, must leave when their hours add up to more than 1050
within one year.
In recent years outcries against abuse of temporary workers have become
louder. “Hourly” or “temporary” workers recently were limited to 1050 hours
per year by the Washington State Legislature in an effort to curb practices
of hiring “permatemps” or workers who toil indefinitely without benefits,
insurance or union membership. The law was passed in response to several
high profile lawsuits. One such lawsuit was the one filed against Microsoft
contending that it employed temporary workers in a fulltime capacity on an
ongoing basis but denied them adequate compensation and benefits. Microsoft
lost the long running case and was forced to pay workers back compensation
and interest on benefits. Another of these lawsuits happened in 1997 when
the State of Washington settled a class-action lawsuit brought by more than
500 part-time and temporary employees. Yet another occurred in 1998 where
the Labor Department sued Time-Warner, the media giant, for denying benefits
to workers allegedly misclassified as temporary workers. Across the country,
similar cases have attempted to address the increasing reliance on temporary
workers.
Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis, a collection of essays
published in 1997, addresses the reliance on graduate students and adjunct
(re: temporary) faculty at major institutions across the country. Striking
similarities between the situation of hourly workers in the lofty academic
fields and those in unskilled food service create an illuminating symmetry
at both “ends” of the university job market.
In her essay “Disposable Faculty: Part-Time Exploitation as Management
Strategy,” Linda Ray Pratt observes that as a “part-time” faculty member,
“You are teaching six courses a year but are still called ‘part-time,’ even
though full-time faculty members typically teach three courses per
semester.”[3]
This situation is mirrored in the way that Housing and Food Services at the
University of Washington “gets around” the 1050 rule by using part-time
workers on a full-time basis for approximately four months and then letting
them go, as demonstrated by profiled food service worker Arturo Sandino’s
situation.
The phenomenon of hiring these workers back at the beginning of a new year,
when they “get” a new set of hours is particularly devious. "Rebecca" (not
her real name), a middle-management professional employee at the University
of Washington remarks, “In this way, some people have worked here for more
than eight years.” The same is true for part-time faculty as Pratt
discusses, “Part-time faculty can usually qualify for up to twenty-six weeks
of unemployment compensation after working for the institution four months…I
have known part-time faculty members who sustained themselves between
appointments in just this way.” A pivotal difference of course, is that HFS
hourly workers are not entitled to twenty-six weeks of compensation, and
usually simply have to find another temporary job to sustain them until they
can be rehired.
Pratt also discusses the despair inherent in this blatantly exploitative
system in academia, “The letter of appointment will also contain the notice
of termination.”[4]
As "Yunis," another food service worker says, “When you sign the paper, you
feel like, ‘great!’ you found a job—then they fire you.”
I interviewed seven food service workers in several different facilities at
the University of Washington, three classified staff, three hourly staff and
one professional. Their names have been changed for this report. The
personal stories which follow are indicative only of their own experiences,
and do not purport to speak for other workers on campus. From speaking with
FSW workers at all levels of classification, a picture emerged of workers
who span a broad array of education level, race, ethnicity, age and, due to
this vast diversity, all had different hopes for the future. Nevertheless,
all felt a certain amount of ambivalence about the “union” in large part
because they feel that it conspires, whether consciously or not, with the
money-holding academic institution and the state legislature to keep hourly
workers eking out a barely livable wage with few options for the future.
Profiling the Workers[5]
I interviewed “Erika” one weekday morning as she was routinely cleaning the
espresso maker at one HFS Restaurant.[6]
Our conversation was intermittently interrupted by the droning of the coffee
grinder and thirsty students stopping to ask for double lattes in their rush
to class. Erika, a white, middle-aged single mother, begins her days early,
and was already half done with her shift by 10:30 am. She typically arrived
at HFS by 6am, after dropping off her young daughter at daycare. The first
hour of her morning consists of set-up before the café opens at 7am and
throngs of hungry students flood its small space.
A Food Service Worker Lead (FSW) Erika is in charge of “cold line.” Her area
of supervision includes the drip coffees, which must be restocked, plus the
sugars, straws, honeys and lids; the fresh fruit bar; the Boss Tucker
sandwich bar; the scone, muffin, donut and croissant trays; a deli where
sandwiches are made to order; the soup bar, the chip, cookie and dry cereal
racks; the espresso bar and two cash registers. She supervises an average of
five employees at any given time – all of them either student or hourly
workers. As we speak, Erika is relaxed and easy going, leaning against the
wall to talk to me in the absence of customers. As soon as customers walk
up, however, she immediately asks them “How can I help you sir?” (Or ma’am).
I was impressed and surprised by her formality and the emphasis she places
on customer service.
Erika began a career in food service at a small college in Vancouver, WA
where she learned to bake. While working there, a friend convinced her to
submit a resume to an ad that wanted a deli/baker. She got the job, and
although she was disappointed to find that it was almost all deli and no
baking, she kept the job while in school. Later, she moved to Seattle and
while looking for a job, applied at a grocery store "since all of my
experience was in deli.” She stayed at her grocery store job for several
years "for the union and the benefits,” and had a child.
At the grocery store she was in the retail clerks union, and although she
never had to file a grievance, she always paid her dues. She began working
at HFS two years ago, and has found that “I’m used to working straight. Here
I don’t have to work so hard.” She sent her resume in on the advice of a
friend and since she considered herself under-qualified; she never thought
that she would get the job. Much to her surprise, she was offered the FSW
lead job soon after her interview, and told her supervisor, “I don’t need to
think about it, I’ll take it.” Eager to get a job with regular hours and
good pay, Erika says, “I wanted a job where I knew they had a union and I
would get benefits. At my old job, I had benefits, but they only paid me
about eight dollars an hour. So I had to work six days a week, and that was
too much.” At HFS, Erika works Sunday through Thursday, and can be home
every afternoon, although “I have to go to bed really early.”
Erika considers herself a staunch union supporter, although she doesn’t go
to meetings (they’re too late) and acknowledges that she doesn’t actively
participate. Still, she considers the union a good thing and is grateful for
the benefits and security it provides. She muses, “They can’t just fire you.
There’s a whole process… you have rights. I could call my union rep.” In
fact, Erika has had several phone conversations with her union
representative, although she’s never met her in person and can’t remember if
her name is Judy or Julie. Most recently, when Erika had to leave her job
unexpectedly for emergency surgery, she called her union rep to ask a
question about signing her hospital release form. “I wanted to make sure
they (HFS) couldn’t just fire me…and she said ‘call me if they try to! You
do have rights!’” she remembers. Erika compares her position to the hourly
workers by saying, “If one of them had to have surgery, they probably
would’ve lost their job. But me, I have something to come back to. “
At the Retail Clerks union, you had to take three unpaid sick days before
you could begin using your paid sick days. “Here,” she says, “it’s better.”
However, she feels the union is not very visible at UW, unlike her previous
job at the grocery store, where the union rep would come around and “Check
in on us.”
Erika also supports the union’s efforts to increase pay, although she is
well aware that there is currently a freeze on wages. Still, she is not yet
at the top of her scale “Unlike a lot of people here, I’m one of the newest
classified workers” and still has one more raise coming. Although in theory
she supports the right to strike, she says that she “Just can’t. I’m the
sole supporter. One day’s pay cut hurts at the end of the month. Last year,
when they were talking about going out on strike, I told them…I couldn’t, I
have a daughter and I have to work, and they were fine because they
understood my situation.”
Her sister works for the Seattle Times, which went on a strike last year
that ended up practically breaking the union, and had a similar experience.
Erika said, “She has a son and husband so…yes, she crossed the picket
line…she was thinking about getting another job, but she didn’t end up doing
that.”
“I dream a lot, but my other side is realistic. I like to be
optimistic, but…if you can’t change anything, you gotta figure something
out, you gotta do something else. There’s a way to create your own life
outside of the system.”
“Kayo” is staring at me intently, with fierce dark eyes under a shock of
dyed-red hair. He rips his gloves off his hands and wipes them on his dark
vintage jeans and says, “Come with me.” Kayo has just finished his nightly
cold line shift at HFS Restaurant, which he ends by closing the deli bar.
After stocking all of the leftover meat, cheese and vegetables in freezers
in the back, tossing out old bagels, wrapping up bread, sweeping the floor,
and wiping down the counters, Kayo is ready to talk. His statement above is
a typical indication of the balance he maintains between a confident
optimism in his own abilities and his future, and the reality that he faces
as a foreigner in the United States. Kayo came to Seattle from Turkey a few
years ago. After taking ESL classes for three months, he started work at the
cafe as an hourly worker and has been there ever since. He averages 16-20
hours per week, and has worked “almost everything.” That includes serving
food and working the grill in addition to his current cold line duties.
Kayo is a student at another college in Seattle, but because he is not at
UW, he is an hourly worker, not a student worker. His passion is media,
especially music, and he says about working at HFS, “It’s not the perfect
thing, I would prefer a job that I would find in music or movies, but for
now it’s fine…” He found his job at HFS through another native of his
country, “Yunis,” who arrived here almost four years ago. Kayo and Yunis
have been friends for seven years, and Kayo will be best man at Yunis’s
wedding this summer.[7]
Kayo finds the stability and freedom of his “day job” attractive, although
he receives neither benefits nor any guarantee of further employment. He has
also bonded with one of his managers, a fellow musician. He says the “people
who work here” are the best thing about his job, although his artistic
sensibilities are injured by the café’s bland and bright décor. About his
working environment he says, “Yeah, I would add some art, you know, music, a
little redecoration, something different from the regular cafeteria. That’s
how I think—you should do things differently.”
Kayo is biding his time until he can find a “serious group of musicians”
with which he can collaborate on a regular basis as a songwriter. He is also
looking for another job somewhere in the music business, possibly a record
shop. “It’s really hard for a foreigner to live in the United States,” he
says, “My parents send me money of course, they’re paying for the school,
but I have a part time job so I can pay my expenses.”
Because of the independent nature of his previous jobs – where he worked as
a musician in bars and clubs – Kayo has never belonged to a union, nor does
he particularly want to. Asked about his situation as an hourly worker, he
says, “I don’t know about those things.” He feels his hourly wage, although
“not enough” is fair for now, and doesn’t particularly feel it is important
to invest time in changing the situation since he sees himself leaving this
job within a year. As long as he has money from his parents as a security
blanket and his dreams of music and media to sustain his hopeful outlook, he
cannot conceive of depending on HFS wages for his livelihood. His view of
his future, perhaps a reflection of his age, is singularly individualistic.
He says he plans to stay in the United States, “Long enough to record some
songs, shoot some movies, in Turkish and English together…I’m saying this
like it will happen. I’m believing what I’m doing and I’m gonna work hard
and get what I can.” He says that the pressure of friends’ expectations is
urging him on, “They’re expecting things from me at home. That makes you
more willing…when you have friends behind you expecting things from you.”
His view of unions, which he calls “social
groups,” is much more guarded than his personal outlook. He says, “I believe
if every individual does what they’re supposed to do, we don’t need that
kind of stuff. When I look at that (unions) they’re just commercializing it,
degrading it, I like to be optimistic, but it’s not gonna change…you just
gotta figure something else out. I mean, I have always had this rebellious
streak but…” Kayo stares at his hands, choosing his words slowly and
carefully, “In Turkey there are unions on every corner. Some smarty guy or
smarty girl shows up and gets the money out of these young people who are
thinking they will be changing things by marching in the streets…nah.” He
leans back in his chair and grins. “Nothing changes.”
“I Have to Work”
“Arturo” is an hourly worker at a different HFS facility. Like Kayo and
Yunis, Arturo is an immigrant to this country. He arrived in Seattle from
Mexico 10 years ago and has worked a variety of low-paying jobs in food
service at places like Starbucks, World Wraps and the Crab Pot. Currently,
in addition to his 28 hours per week at HFS, Arturo works 40 hours in a
upscale Seattle restaurant, where he’s been cooking pasta and making pizza’s
since 1994. Like Kayo, Arturo heard about the opening at HFS through a
friend, “Memo,” who also works at the Seattle restaurant. Until recently,
Memo made stir-fry at HFS, but he has since been asked to leave because his
temporary hours have given out. Now Arturo works the stir-fry, in addition
to making pizzas and serving food in the line.
When Arturo started working at HFS his hours were Fridays through Sundays,
but after a month they were inexplicably cut to Friday nights and Saturday
mornings. After working this shift for two months, and asking for more
hours, management restored his Friday through Sunday shift. Now Arturo works
every weekday evening from 4-8pm, plus an eight-hour shift on Saturdays.
Recently management has told Arturo that his hours are up and he will have
to leave by June 14th. However, he’s been told that if he leaves a number
where he can be reached, they will call him in September and he will most
likely be able to come back to work.
The reason he works so much is that he is trying to support his mother, who
is home in Mexico. He says, “I have to work…I keep my money and send it to
Mexico.”
“I’ve seen it all and I know…we all have to work so we should get along.”
“Sandi” is the oldest employee at her HFS restaurant. She has
worked there for fourteen years and has spent a total of 25 years working at
the University. For the past fourteen years she has been a Food Service
Lead, and like Erika, she starts her job at 6am. She does “Whatever's
needed,” but has a general routine where she stocks the salad bar and fills
fruit containers. She doesn’t officially supervise anyone, but says she is
constantly giving advice to the students and hourly staff or showing them
where things are. She says, “I’ve been here longer, so I can show them how
to do something faster.” She plans to retire in the near future, perhaps as
soon as two years, and likes the work at HFS because she likes the
independent nature of the job. Before working at HFS, Sandi worked at
another residence hall on campus, and previous to that she worked in a
sorority kitchen on Greek row.
The food service workers were not yet organized when Sandi joined
the union, so joining wasn’t mandatory but she says chose to do so anyway
because “There was such a strong anti-labor feeling at that time…I felt
there had to be some collective action.” Sandi says that when she first
began working, in the 1960’s, she was wary of the unions. Even when she came
to work at UW in 1977, she initially stayed away from them. However, after
studying labor history on her own, and learning more about the plight of
early garment workers who worked long hours in terrible conditions, Sandi
became more sympathetic to the local, and decided she would do whatever is
necessary to raise living conditions. Another event that occurred in the
late seventies further swayed her to the union cause. A close friend of
hers had a brother who worked in a mine in Idaho. At the time his mine was
not unionized, and when he lost his eye in a mining accident, he also lost
his job without compensation. Sandi says that after that, she decided she
would support strikes on campus for better working conditions and benefits.
Thirteen years ago, Sandi did participate in a protest for better
treatment, although she didn’t actually have to strike since it was her day
off. She remembers, “We all went down to the president’s office, you know.
There was one girl there who could speak really well, and she had one of
those bullhorns. She yelled up at the windows, ‘this is a castle, and there
sits the king!!’” Sandi smiled at the recollection of this event and seemed
to remember it as exciting and without regret. Asked if a goal was
accomplished, she said she didn’t know exactly what it was about at the
time, but felt she should show solidarity with her fellow workers anyway.
Although Sandi is sympathetic to the poor situation of many hourly workers,
she sees their large numbers as weakening the union staff. She states, “We
rely on other unions (at UW) to support us…It’s not a solid union.” She
realizes that hourly workers do not have the job security that she has, but
feels that if the union could figure out a way to incorporate their numbers,
it would make Local 1488 more powerful.
Sandi gets along fairly well with her supervisors, and says the
manager, who has been there for seven years, has mellowed out. She says she
has no problem going to him if she has a complaint. Sandi’s attitude is one
of compromise. She says, “They have a responsibility and so do we.” She
sees it as both the employer and the employee’s job to show each other
respect and compromise.
She says, “I think the relationship should be happier (between employees
and middle management) they’re job providers, it’s true, but we’re helping
them—without us they couldn’t do nothing. How else do they run a business?
They have to borrow from the public, and use the public, and we are the
public.”
“If I take a job, I keep it, I come to work.”
“What do you want?!” "Alfred" bllows at me without looking up from the pan
where he is swiftly breading chicken breasts. Five more pans, already
filled, are lined up on the counter in the kitchen. Alfred is “Cook One” and
he cooks dinner every night at an HFS facility, beginning at 11am and ending
about 7:30pm. When he comes in at 11:00, he goes about his routine (“I only
have a routine for the first hour and half”), filling pasta bins, getting
the many utensils he will need for the next eight hours, yelling at the dish
room staff if the utensils are not clean, and pulling out the food he will
begin to prep. Periodically he takes long strides around the breadth of the
kitchen, his 6' 4" frame slightly hunched over at the waist, long legs
carrying him swiftly around as he barks orders and calls out workers names.
He is in charge of supervising the majority of the hourly staff, which
includes all the kitchen workers and many of the frontline food servers and
back room food “preppers.” He gave me the impression that he’s had quite a
few conflicts with people he supervises, but says he has “Learned to allow
for peoples’ challenges.” Alfred also feels that he is hurt by the number of
hourly staff working at HFS, complaining that most of them don’t stay long
enough for him to teach them enough to be useful in the kitchen. He says
hiring a more stable prep staff is the number one thing he would like to
change about his job.
Alfred describes himself as “A fifth generation cook…my family’s been here
since the Constitution.” He says he’s been cooking for more than 25 years,
over half his life, although he’s worked in a wide variety of venues,
including daycares and other universities across the country. He has also
worked on fishing boats in Alaska, on a yacht in San Francisco, and owned a
catering company. In the early 90’s, he owned a jazz club in Portland but
said “I don’t like Jazz…I just saw it as a chance to play with food.” That
ability to play with food is Alfred’s favorite pastime, as well as his job.
He’s been at HFS for almost two years, and enjoys the amount of autonomy he
has, but sees plenty of room for improvement. “They set the menu…but let’s
just say I use my own judgment on some things,” he says. He appreciates the
benefits of being one of the few classified staff at HFS, such as his health
insurance and relatively high wages. He points out, “There’s an A-K scale.
Most people get hired in at ‘A’ but I was hired at ‘K.’” Because he was
hired at the top of his pay scale, Alfred receives only cost-of-living
raises.
He dislikes what he calls the “bureaucracy” of HFS, saying, “I
wasn’t schooled in it,” and would like a freer hand to determine what kind
of food to make and how much. He says that middle management, which sets the
menu, all too often has an attitude of, “It’s our way or the highway,”
Alfred says, “I would like it to be more flexible.”
Alfred, like Kayo, is not a strong supporter of unions, although unlike many
of the other staff members, he has belonged to one in nearly all of his
previous jobs. “The Northwest is a union region…if you live here, you gotta
be in one," he says. When he worked on fishing boats, he belonged to a
Maritime union, and at the Kingdome he belonged to Local 8, which he didn’t
like. Alfred says his union rep is very accessible, although he couldn’t
remember his name, and hollered across the kitchen to another worker, “Hey
what’s the union guy? What’s his name?” After a few minutes it was
determined that his name is Joe, although Alfred said he never knew his last
name and doesn’t have much to do with him.
The extent of Alfred’s participation in the union is paying his dues, and he
says he wouldn’t support a union strike and didn’t join the one-day strike
last year. His attitude is that striking is against his personal integrity.
“If I take a job, I keep it, I come to work," he asserts. Alfred said that
in the event of a strike, he would have no problem crossing a picket line,
and in fact has done so before. People tried to give him a hard time, he
says he “Didn’t stand for it,” and the picketers backed off.
He doesn’t resent the money he pays to the union, although he
doesn’t know what it’s used for and feels that the union is too slow to
handle grievances. In his two years at HFS, he’s had a number of grievances,
mostly with management, but says he found it’s better to “Handle it myself.”
He feels the union should work on getting him better medical and dental
benefits, and should have a better and more defined merit system. Alfred
feels that his wages should not stop at “K” but should be dependent at least
partly on experience and customer satisfaction.
“I’m a good worker. People who say, ‘I couldn’t find a job’ are lazy.”
Alfred’s attitude that merit should count for more was echoed by Yunis, a
Turkish worker who has worked for HFS for three and half years. Previously
he worked at the Subway at the Hub, and at another residence hall. Yunis is
an hourly worker who currently works 25 hours a week, about five hours a
day, during dinner. His job for the past year has been a made-to-order bar
concept that Yunis proposed to management himself. The work is labor
intensive, hot and sweaty. As I interview him, I notice several blisters on
his hands, and ask if those are souvenirs of HFS, “Of course,” he grins.
Like Kayo, Yunis is from Turkey. However, Yunis is not a student, and says
he “Doesn’t like school.” When he first came to Seattle, he went to North
Seattle Community College for two years before dropping out. Recently, Yunis
married a student worker at HFS, and they plan to have a formal wedding this
summer. His wife will graduate from the University of Washington at the end
of next year, but until then Yunis says, “My priority is to make as much
money as I can so I can support her.”
Yunis’s added responsibilities prompted him to apply for classified status
six months ago. He says HFS sent an advertisement around saying what they
were looking for, and his manager told him he should think about applying.
“So I put together my resume and sent it downstairs (to Human Resources),”
he says. His resume was one of three or four chosen by HR to send around
campus to managers who might be interested in hiring. However, no one on
campus had an opening for a classified employee.
“One of the most difficult things about the system is that when you find
someone great you don’t have the opportunity to hire them,” says Rebecca, a
manager/chef at another HFS facility. Because she is part of the
professional staff, she does not belong to the union either. Like Yunis, she
can be fired without cause. To her though, this is neither strange nor
unfair.
She says, “I worked in the private sector before this…a lot of restaurants.
In the private sector, if you don’t perform, they kick you out! That was
something I had to get used to here, that they (the classified staff)
couldn't just be fired. You have to jump through about 15 hoops with the
union first.” Because it is so hard to fire classifieds, Rebecca says there
is enormous pressure on management to hire someone who is right for the job
saying, “Because they’re going to be here forever…especially when the
economy’s not doing so well, this place looks pretty secure.”
Rebecca says she has, “Been on both sides of the union.” She worked for a
private company for about five years doing phone sales and says, “I hated my
job but I managed to work there for 5 years. I had a 20% absenteeism
rate…that means that every fifth day I was calling in sick.” She was never
fired because and says “They had to issue warnings first, and as soon as
they gave me a warning…I would find another way to keep myself amused.” She
laughs, “I’ve matured a bit since then.” She feels that unions often exist
only to protect lazy workers. Without the union, she says, “You either
perform or you leave.”
Yunis has decided to quit HFS by the end of spring quarter. This decision is
partly because he was unable to reach classified status and partly because
his time as an hourly worker has “run out.” By the time he quits, he will
have only 77 more hours that he is able to work before he reaches a limit of
850 per year. He has been told that the University has had to “freeze the
hiring” because first the Hub and then McMahon dining hall were closed, and
there was an abundance of classified workers. “I don’t know, I don’t even
care anymore," he says. His bitterness was evident when I asked if I could
use his real name for this project. “Of course! It’s the truth, why should
I be ashamed to use my name?” When I insinuated that perhaps using his name
would have repercussions for other staff who wished to remain protected,
since they would not be “quitting,” Yunis exploded, “I am not quitting
either! I’m losing my job! Is there some kind of difference?”
Previously, the Washington State statute was vague on what constituted a
temporary employee. Now, under the 1050 rule, employers must either fire
workers or make the decision to hire them. Although the law was passed to
prevent hourly worker abuse, according to Rebecca it merely creates another
way for employers to exploit them. At HFS, she says, management actually
stops employees (fires them) at 850 hours, to make sure that they do not
accidentally cross the line over into classified staff, something that can
happen if an hourly worker is employed for more than 1050 hours in one year.
When a manager lets that happens, she says, he’s the one who gets fired.
Instead, most hourly workers at HFS work full time just like regular
employees, and use up their allowed hours in approximately five months.
After that they’re told to leave, but with a verbal understanding that they
can come back at the start of the next year, when they get a whole new set
of hours. In this way she says, “Some people have worked here for more than
eight years…”
Yunis has no intention of become one of these workers. He has been told that
if he comes back in September he can have his hourly job again, but he
scorns the idea of working for HFS without classified status. Yunis sees the
minimum on hours and the union protection given to classified workers as
combining to thoroughly exploit the hourly worker. “It works for them—the
people with the money. Classified are set. Students don’t care. It’s the
hourly workers who get screwed," he says.
He sees classified staff, like Sandi and Erika, as workers who are so
securely protected by the union that they become lazy and ineffectual at
their jobs. When talking to him, his barely controlled frustration is
evident, as he struggles to find the words. “I’m not trying to sound like
I’m cocky…but I could do the work of these people and more…I’m a good worker
and I could do this better,” he asserts. Although hourly workers are made
aware of their precarious status when they are hired, Yunis says workers
still feel robbed and dismayed when they are suddenly let go, “When you sign
the paper, you feel like, ‘great!’ you found a job—then they fire you.”
Yunis’s feelings about the union are mixed. On the one hand he supports it
by saying, “I don’t look at unions bad, I never have. Unions protect the
employee from the manager, that’s the way I see it.” When he lived in
Turkey, he worked at a Burger King and belonged to a union. “I paid my
money, but I never need to have business (with the union.)” On the other
hand, Yunis shares Rebecca’s view that unions protect lazy workers,
particularly those he sees as “hogging” the few, and precious classified
jobs at HFS.
“If you’re a good worker, you don’t need a union, because the boss won’t
get you. I’m a good worker, so the union is good for me because it protects
me…but I could get another job. If you’re lazy the union protects your job.
People who say ‘I couldn’t find a job’ are lazy. They’re the ones who need
help,” he says. Rebecca also sees burnout and laziness among classified
workers, saying, “How do you manage someone who’s been here for 20 years?”
The rate of turnover among management is much higher than that of
classified, in part because professionals are not unionized. “They see us
come and go…it’s very difficult,” she says. Her dismal view of the union
seems to be confirmed by an experience a good friend and former colleague at
the company she once worked for. Her friend was a union member when the
company went on strike last year. Rebecca’s friend supported the strike and
stayed away from work. However, by the time she came back to work, the union
effectively was broken, and less than 50 employees were active union
members. Those that were union members, like Rebecca’s friend, had been
reassigned and put in an environment with a new team of workers and new
supervisors. Her friend was also given extraordinary sales expectations to
“keep her on her toes” and insure that she never fulfilled her job. Once the
union was gone, Rebecca says, the environment was so oppressive that her
friend ended up leaving after being lectured for not acknowledging a former
scab in the hallway. Paradoxically, Rebecca seems to hold the union
responsible for this, perhaps for perpetuating an unsuccessful strike.
A common thread running through the words of the food workers, whether
classified, professional or hourly, was their overall ambivalence about the
effectiveness of unions as a tool to improve the livelihood of workers. All
of the people I interviewed, whether they came down in the end as pro- or
anti-union, shared mixed feelings and confusions about the purpose and duty
of a union in a workplace dominated by non-classified staff.
Another disturbing element I found was that all of the classified workers I
spoke to had been hired from “outside,” none had worked their way up from an
hourly status, with the exception of Sandi, who started working for the
University before there was a union. As Linda Ray Pratt describes, the
situation is similar for part-time faculty, “The jobs hardly ever convert to
regular tenure-track lines.”[8]
So the plight of temporary workers seems to be not much alleviated by the
1050 rule despite the fact that in the lawsuits that prompted the rule, the
defendant employers were encouraged to hire part-time employees as full
after they had completed a certain amount of hours. As Yunis’ situation
shows, it is very difficult to “work up” no matter how skilled or talented
you are. “(Workers) are demoralized when performance goes largely unnoticed
or faithful service over time does not merit stability of appointment...”[9]
Linda Ray Pratt alludes to the huge profit gained by the institution by not
having to pay benefits to temporary workers. “First, the profit to the
institution is outrageously advantageous.”[10]
Rebecca, the middle-management professional, echoed this sentiment that the
hourly situation among food service workers is economically driven by
saying, “Sometimes benefits are 25% of the hourly wage on top of them... so
if someone earns 10 dollars an hour, they really have to pay them $12.50…and
they just can’t afford it.”
As a deliberate management strategy the exploitation of temporary workers is
seemingly seen as unfortunate but necessary, in times when higher education
receives less and less support at the state level. However, an attitude that
seems to imply, “We don’t have the money to offer a living wage” to any but
classified employees belies the real truth of simple prioritizing that is at
the heart of hourly exploitation.
In her essay, Pratt refers to a number of tenured faculty who are gradually
becoming aware and concerned about the large numbers of part-timers on
campus and says, “Growing numbers of them are troubled because the link
between increased use of part-time faculty and administrative redesign of
faculty roles is more apparent now that post-tenure review is an open
strategy.” It is highly probable that as Pratt implies, tenured faculty may
sit up and take notice of the plight of part-time staff only when their own
security is threatened by the same winds of academic restructuring. However,
it is important that they and the rest of the campus community, including
undergraduate students, begin to cultivate an awareness of this situation
now. As members of the university who are literally served by the
exploitation of food workers, students should be troubled by what is deemed
a necessary allocation of funds that results in only a select “elite” of
workers who are organized into unions. The benefits of job security,
retirement accruement and a livable wage should be the standard on all
college campuses, both for those in the academic and laboring “class.”
Furthermore, there is a direct link between undergraduate students and
future academic jobs, while an even more immediate link exists in the form
of the many of us who now hold and will continue to rely on entry-level, low
wage food service jobs in order to pay for that academic training.
© Yasmine Tarhouni
2002
