Work Stoppage! Students and Workers Take Action at Sarah Lawrence
As I’ve mentioned before, the food service workers at Sarah Lawrence College—employees of AVI Foodsystems—are fighting for a contract with full family health benefits, decent wages, a secure retirement plan, and the assurance that they’ll receive respect on the job. Yesterday the workers at the two main food service locations, The Pub and Bates, stopped working in the middle of the lunch hour to protest the current state of affairs, and to demand a fair contract from AVI.
And the workers were not alone! SLC Worker Justice, a student organization devoted to supporting campus workers, organized the students and faculty to be a part of the workers’ action. As the work stoppage began, these students chanted with the workers, spoke out in support of the workers and encouraged other students to join the group as we marched across campus. As the group moved from The Pub to Bates to the Student Life Committee meeting, the group grew from around 10 students to over 100. Almost every patron in the entire cafeteria joined the workers in chants demanding a fair contract and health insurance.
I’ll post video footage of the action in the coming days—there was great worker and student testimony that I’d like to share with the Stir It Up community. For now, I’d just like to thank the students who have been so involved and supportive in the workers’ struggle! SLC Worker Justice had been passing out the above leaflet at almost every meal for the past week-and-a-half, educating the rest of the campus about the workers situation and mobilizing the entire community to support the workers when the time came. Yesterday it came…and if AVI doesn’t change their tune in negotiation, it will come again.
