On Thursday, February 27th, hundreds of cooks, cashiers, baristas, dishwashers and catering workers at Northwestern voted to authorize a strike amidst ongoing negotiations with their union, Local 1, and Northwestern’s foodservice provider Compass Group.
Veronica Reyes has been working at Northwestern for 15 years. She works as a cashier in the West Side of Foster Walker Dining Hall. She’s one of the 500 workers whose contract expired on August 31st. For Reyes, it’s been months without real progress.
VERONICA REYES: Well, the process has been very stressful for all of us. I can’t believe, you know, why Compass takes so long just to give us the fair amount on our benefits, and that they don’t respect employees.
So after over six months of waiting, a strike has been authorized. But what exactly does that mean? Kevin Boyle is a professor of American history at Northwestern who specializes in labor history.
KEVIN BOYLE: They did an authorization vote. It authorizes their union leadership to call a strike. Doesn’t mean they’re going to have a strike. It just means that they are in support of the idea of going on strike, if necessary, in the collective bargaining process.
While it doesn’t mean a strike is guaranteed, a successful strike authorization vote turns up the heat on Compass.
BOYLE: What they’re saying to the company is, look, we’ll give you a period of time, maybe a week, maybe two weeks, in which you can settle with us before we go on strike. But if you guys don’t do it in those two weeks, then we’re out of here. But they know that if they don’t reach an agreement, that strike’s going to come. And that’s what ups the pressure.
However, the pressure applied by the potential of a strike is not a one way street.
BOYLE: So the company has pressure to bargain to get this strike over with, but so does the union, because their workers aren’t getting paid. And in a low-wage industry, which unfortunately the dining hall work is, most people can’t afford to be out of a paycheck for very long. So it pushes both sides to try to get things settled as quickly as they can.
Workers have secured some protections for job security through measures like the Worker Retention Ordinance, passed on February 24th by the Evanston City Council. However, workers remain concerned about many issues, like the matter of livable pensions, or rather lack thereof.
REYES: Unbelievable that we work in such a prestigious university that we cannot retire. I have a lot of co-workers who are already over 72, and they cannot retire because the money from retirement is insufficient.
Workers are also concerned about Compass’ business practices in dealing with bad management and their own wellbeing.
REYES: We have a proposal to the company about management when they treat employees badly and they don’t want to, you know, agree to that proposal. And this is very important, because for a few years what Compass is doing with bad management is just they’re moving one management from one unit to another. And this is unacceptable. No one should be, you know, working in a hostile environment. And personally, I’m tired of hearing this, that management mistreat employees and they just move to another unit.
Therefore, if Compass remains unreceptive to these demands and others, the workers will likely go ahead and call a strike. Which as previously stated, will affect them and Compass, but a strike’s impact stretches beyond these two parties. Therefore, the failure to reach a fair contract is not just a labor issue, it’s a University issue. Here’s Boyle again.
BOYLE: How consumers react to a strike, any strike, makes a huge, huge difference. But in this one, the reaction is particularly important because students have a lot of political power in a situation like this.
BOYLE: If students brought pressure to the university by demanding that the university pressure the company to negotiate and settle, that would be in the union’s favor.
And that is exactly what is happening. Weinberg Senior Julián Fefer is a member of Students Organizing for Labor Rights, also known as SOLR: a group on campus that advocates for and supports Northwestern service workers.
JULIÁN FEFER: The workers right now are incredibly inspiring. And I think as students, we need to let ourselves be inspired by them and let ourselves be driven to action. I think all students should see that this isn’t something that we can join in a week or a month. This is happening now because the workers are ready now. And now is when they’ve said that they won’t tolerate Compass’s failure to negotiate and Northwestern’s failure to create just conditions for them. I think we as students need to rise to that moment and we need to be ready to turn up for workers. Whether it’s wearing a pin, signing petitions, showing up to actions or getting creative and in whatever ways we think we can support our campus workers.
On Wednesday, 65 students delivered SOLR’s petition to Northwestern’s Office of Procurement and Payment Services regarding the current state of negotiations and the University’s role and responsibility in the process. According to Fefer, the petition has two core values.
FEFER: The first is that we as students are in solidarity with workers We’re demanding that Northwestern create a space that aligns with the values that it claims to have. It treat workers with dignity, it pay them fair wages so that they can live financially secure lives and it grants them access to a dignified retirement.
And second? Asking Northwestern to intervene and push Compass to sign off on a fair contract in order to not cause a disruption for campus life.
FEFER: We came to Northwestern for a good educational experience. And this strike has the potential to mess that up. If there is a strike that impairs Northwestern’s ability to provide us with what we came here for, then that’s, that’s Northwestern’s fault. And we call on Northwestern to make sure it is providing us with the academic experience that we came here expecting.
It’s been years since dining workers have found themselves this close to striking. In 2021, dining workers authorized a strike but reached a deal with Compass before any further action could be taken. However, this time very well could be different. Which would be a key victory towards securing fair treatment and conditions, but it can also be very daunting.
FEFER: The like common phrase in these spaces, nobody is strike happy Nobody’s happy to go on strike. It’s a hard thing. The workers get paid less than they would, paid less by the union than they would going to work. So it requires an investment and a belief in the union, in your fellow coworkers, in students to show up.
But ultimately, people like Reyes are persevering through this uncertain time because of that faith as well as their care for the job and the Northwestern community.
REYES: We are trying our best as a negotiation team to fight for a fair wage, a good pension and respect to all employees. And I want to say thank you to all the students who have been supporting us. You know, we couldn’t keep going without their support.
REYES: I really love my job. I really love the students. I love when I meet freshmen and I really love and enjoy when they come and tell me “I’m graduating”. You know, it fills a happiness. Even though they are not my kids, I feel like they’re my kids.
Compass responded to WNUR News’ request for comment with the following:
“We care deeply about our employees and have spent nine months negotiating in good faith with the Union to provide meaningful wage increases and enhanced benefits. Our most recent offer includes an immediate $3 per hour raise (16% increase) to all associates, back pay bonuses, $7 per hour raises over the life of the contract, 13 paid holidays, 10 sick days, and an 80% increase in pension contributions.”
As of March 5th, the dining workers have not gone on strike.
For WNUR News, I’m Sophia Casa.
