By: Purvi Desai
PLUMSTED A change in food service companies at the schools has forced the longtime "lunch ladies" to either accept minimum wage pay or leave, according to a spokesperson for the group.
And they might ask students to brown-bag their lunches in protest of what the ladies say is a bum deal.
As the 2006-07 school year gets under way, 18 food service workers at the New Egypt School District, who were formerly under contract with Sodexho USA, are now negotiating a contract with the much larger food service company Aramark. The change in vendors is causing a financial problem for the workers, who say they stand to lose both their benefits packages and a significant amount of pay under the new company.
Sodexho opted not to bid on a new contract after its 2005-06 contract expired in June because it "determined that continuing to provide food services at New Egypt School District was not in the best interest of the company," said Kate Wester, Sodexho’s senior manager of communications, on Tuesday.
Aramark, which is stepping into the school district for the first time, deemed food service "a minimum-wage job," said Mary James, a spokesperson for the lunch ladies. She said Aramark would not honor the previous benefits and pay rates the workers established with Sodexho through union negotiations in April 2005.
Since the ladies are temporarily laid off at the end of every school year, they expected to be called back as they always are, prior to the beginning of the next school year, she said. But Aramark did not contact the lunch ladies until the end of July, when they were informed they would have to interview for their jobs, Ms. James said.
Under Sodexho, the cafeteria crew worked between four and seven hours per day and was making between $7 and $12.50 per hour, according to the type of work each person did when the school year of 2005-06 ended, said one lunch lady who asked that her name not be disclosed, as negotiations are still ongoing with Aramark.
Under Aramark, "We’ve been cut back from what we were getting," the lunch lady said Tuesday. She added that Aramark has not specified how much the lunch ladies will now get paid in the new school year (just that wages will be lower), nor what the schedules will look like. "Some people have quit," she said.
Three negotiation sessions between Service Workers United and Aramark were held on Aug. 10, 15, and 24, Ms. James said.
"They are being asked to come back at minimum wage when they all made more than that in the spring when school ended," she said. Although, this is not the end of all negotiations possible for situation that the lunch ladies find themselves in. Negotiations are expected to continue until an agreement is reached, the lunch lady said. Plumsted schools re-open on Sept. 7, and most of the lunch ladies plan on working when the children return to school, despite the lower wages.
Representatives from Aramark did not return repeated calls from The Messenger-Press for comment.
In addition to lower pay and loss of benefits, the workers are fuming over some of the other stipulations they could face under the proposed Aramark contract.
"They are being told they have to pay for their own background checks and fingerprinting," Ms. James said. "They had sick/personal days that are (now) being taken away; they had a reimbursement for shoes that are slip resistant and required by the company. Also, they will get three uniform shirts that will require washing a couple times a week and we know what that extra will do to the septic systems at their homes."
Ms. Wester said that at the time that Sodexho served lunch in Plumsted schools, leave time was based on the collective bargaining agreement with the union.
"However, generally speaking, (crew leaders) received 15 days paid general purpose leave," she said. "Hourly employees received five days general purpose leave."
The lunch lady said fingerprinting and background checks will cost $78 per person. "We don’t object to this needing to be done, but why should we have to pay for it?" she said.
Their union, affiliated with Service Employees International Union 2552 of New York, will be continuing to press for further negotiations, Ms. James said. In the meanwhile, all the ladies can hope for is to get support from the community and the students that some of them have been serving for more than 18 years, she said. The minimum that any of the women have served as lunch lady is two years, Ms. James said.
"They live in town, they support their community, they don’t think it’s right that the children should suffer," she said.
Ms. James said she and some other ladies concerned about the lunch ladies are passing the word to parents and people in the community to support a boycott of lunch at the cafeteria for the first two days of school. "If it can be arranged and pulled off, it would be great," she said. "Aramark needs to realize that the residents in this town are not backwood hicks that they can pull a fast one on when it comes to negotiating a contract."
School district officials declined to comment on the situation.

