AU's Community Action and Social Justice Coalition is petitioning to get fair benefits for Aramark, Bon Appetit and other subcontracted company workers at the university.
"This campaign is something that we took upon ourselves after talking to the workers about their conditions," said Geoff Ramsey, a sophomore in the School of International Service and an organizer of CASJ's Solidarity With AU Workers Campaign. "None of them asked us to do this for them initially, but since we've started nearly all of them that I've spoken with have expressed their gratitude and support for what we're trying to do."
Currently, Aramark workers make a starting salary of $11.50 an hour and get basic health insurance, which allows them to pay a 20 percent co-pay, according to Ramsey. Employee benefits also include life insurance, disabilities, 10 vacation days per year and one paid sick day per month.
After three months of employment with Aramark, wages increase to $12.50 an hour, and after three years of working with the company, wages increase by 50 cents, according to the Aramark employee contract.
Currently, the minimum wage in D.C. is $7.55 an hour, according to U.S. Department of Labor.
CASJ hopes to start improving worker benefits and wages by getting tuition remission for Aramark workers. Tuition remission is when employees and their families can go to school at AU without paying tuition costs. The group has put out a petition for both students and faculty to sign.
"We've petitioned for only about two weeks and we've already gotten over one thousand signatures," said Emma Greenbaum, a junior in SIS and another organizer of the Solidarity Campaign.
Allowing the Aramark workers to take part in the tuition remission program would put no additional financial stress on the university, according to Ramsey.
"This wouldn't be very difficult for the university to start up, it wouldn't come as any additional costs to the university, they're not going to have to hire hordes of new professors," he said. "To accommodate these masses of people [with tuition remission] it would just be a matter of getting the names and identities of the Aramark workers."
Jorge Abud, AU's assistant vice president of facilities and administrative services, said he disagrees with Ramsey. Getting tuition remission for Aramark employees and other subcontracted workers at AU is not as simple as it seems, he said.
"The reason the university can provide tuition remission to its employees is because we are the employer, and we can give that away tax free ... to Aramark employees none of it can be tax free because they're not our employees," Abud said.
The idea of Aramark worker tuition remission came to Abud's attention about five years ago, but it did not work out because it was unclear if that was actually something Aramark employees wanted, he said.
"You know, the whole process of Aramark, and the union representing the workers, is that it's a trade off," he said. "Often, [Aramark employees] will trade off one benefit for another, or benefits for wages, and in the last discussion, when Aramark was negotiating with the union, the tuition issue came up but it did not seem to be something that was a strong interest to the Aramark workers."
Once tuition remission benefits are gained for Aramark workers, CASJ would like to continue with their campaign to get more benefits and pay wages for employees. The philosophy behind this campaign is to get the AU community to realize Aramark workers are people too, and more than just labor, Ramsey said.
"The whole ideology behind this is that [Aramark employees are] more than factor inputs, they're more than labor, they're human beings that aspire to do more with their lives than clean up people's vomit and make them omelets," he said.
The meager benefits and wages that the Aramark employees are currently receiving go against AU's entire school philosophy, Ramsey and Greenbaum said.
"The Methodists have an entire book devoted to social justice, and a specific section devoted to workers rights," Ramsey said. "AU is a Methodist school, so if you think about it, this whole concept [poor employee benefits and wages] goes against AU's principles-not only do we claim to be a social justice institution, but we claim to be a Methodist institution."
Nevertheless, Aramark employee benefits and wages are based on what other companies in the D.C. area - which are similar to Aramark - are giving their employees, Abud said. The university has a contract with Aramark, and the company separately negotiates wages and benefits with a union that represents its employees, he said.
If Aramark employees did have a problem with their current situation, they could have their union representative approach the school and take it from there, Abud said.
"We don't really have a role [when it comes to employee wages and benefits] we could chose to impose ourselves, but we don't, we haven't in the past," he said. "Because the workers are represented by a union there is someone there looking out for their best interests so we didn't see that it was the university's role to interfere with that."
The university has not received any complaints from Aramark workers, Abud said.
"The people who directly manage the Aramark relationship [at AU] have not gotten complaints from Aramark employees about their benefits," he said. "[If we were to receive complaints] we would talk to Aramark about it and take a look at what the issues are."
CASJ approached President Neil Kerwin's office with the subject, and they asked the campaign to write a letter. According to both Ramsey and Greenbaum, CASJ has yet to receive a response from someone in the president's office.
CASJ has not approached Abud on the subject of better wages and benefits for subcontracted workers at AU, but Abud said if a student organization were to approach him on the subject, he would listen to what they have to say.
"We always listen to any proposal that's raised to see what the issues are," he said. "We're always into looking at things people propose, they're usually a lot more complex [to do] than it appears on the surface."
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