Adam Goodman | Servin' up some injustice

A native Philadelphian and father of six, Troy Harris always serves food with a smile.

Harris has been working in kosher dining at Penn for eight years. He spent his first three with the University's previous food service provider, Bon Appetit, and the last five at Falk Dining Commons in Hillel.

As a cook, Harris makes $11.70 an hour, which is about $2.00 less than what he would make if he had the same position in 1920 Commons, Hill or Kings Court.

You see, Commons, Hill and KCECH, are all staffed by Penn employees who have been unionized with AFSCME Local 54 for years. According to Business Services spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger, these employees are managed, but not employed by Aramark. Harris and the rest of the Hillel dining staff are Aramark employees; they're not unionized, and they're not affiliated with Penn.

In practice, this means that there are significant discrepancies between the wages and benefits of the two groups. The Penn employees receive higher wages, more vacation days, tuition assistance, etc.

Considering the various dining hall staffs do essentially the same work, this is an odd set-up, but it is not patently unfair. Aramark can't be expected to unionize its own employees or surpass industry standards.

But what is unfair is how Aramark disregards its own policies. What's unfair is how members of the dining staff have been skipped over for raises during their annual performance reviews. What's unfair is how Aramark passes over the dining staff in favor of outsiders when it comes to higher-level promotions. What's unfair is how Aramark intimidated its employees throughout my research process. And that's just the short list.

Take raises, for instance. According to Aramark spokeswoman Kristine Grow, "Aramark's practice for its hourly employees is to conduct annual reviews and at that time give merit increases as they are applicable to the employees."

Merit sounds nice, but there's a reason the collective bargaining agreement covering Penn dining employees bases its wage scale solely on length of service. For a corporate behemoth like Aramark, evaluating based on "merit" is really just an excuse to skip raises as it sees fit. Just ask Harris - he says he's been skipped twice.

And while Grow claimed that Aramark actively "promotes from within," the dining staff begged to differ.

"I just hate to see somebody that comes in and don't know nothing about the business making more than you," Harris said. "That happened two times this semester."

Even worse, Jessica Goldberg, an Aramark marketing official, disrupted one of my interviews by demanding that she be present for it (she was coincidentally in Hillel at the time). Following that incident, multiple staff members were instructed by their bosses not to talk to me without an Aramark official present. One of my sources was no longer willing to go on the record for fear of losing his job. I don't blame him.

When I asked Grow if Aramark had a problem with its employees being interviewed by me, she told me that "we absolutely respect the rights of the employees and the students to talk to the media."

Clearly.

I could go on about how employees told me that Aramark skimps on their vacation days and doesn't inform them of their benefits, but I only have 750 words.

Good thing we go to Penn and have an administration that cares about social responsibility, right? Initially, I was hopeful.

In early February, a concerned College sophomore named Malka Fleischmann met with Penn Dining Director Laurie Cousart and Executive Director of Business Services Douglas Berger. A week later, the entire Hillel dining staff received what they described as "unheard of" raises across the board from $1.00 to $2.00, rather than the usual $.25 to $.30.

The large raise was a welcome start, but it was as much an admission of guilt as anything else, which is probably why Grow and Cousart denied that it was a response to anything.

"For that to happen," one employee told me, "it says to me: 'We know we were doing you guys kind of bad.'"

In a joint interview, Cousart and Lea-Kruger told me that no pressure had been placed on Aramark and that they "had no knowledge of any grievance or problem." This was particularly strange to me since I had begun the interview by delineating the dining staff's grievances and problems, as had Fleischmann a few weeks earlier. When I pressed the point, Lea-Kruger told me that "they're Aramark employees . we can't respond to somebody else's employees' grievances."

That's true. It's also true that the administration contracts Aramark, and by refusing to do or say anything substantive, it is implicitly sanctioning the company's mistreatment of the Hillel dining staff.

I am ashamed - and I don't use this language lightly - to attend an institution which disregards workers' rights and student concerns in this manner.

Penn should be publicly pressuring Aramark and implementing oversight on campus. At the very least, they should be investigating the issue. Aramark must be held accountable. If the administration won't do it, then students will have to.

Troy Harris deserves better. So do we.

Adam Goodman is a College junior from San Diego. His e-mail address is goodman@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Devil's Advocate appears on Thursdays.

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