Unjust Policies Harm Workers on the Ground

Tonight, Georgetown will hold a reception to announce the opening of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. As Georgetown alumni who worked hard during our time as students to force Georgetown to live up to its Catholic and Jesuit ideals by treating campus workers with respect and dignity, we are happy to see this initiative’s debut. It is exciting to see the university dedicate funds and resources to exploring working class issues, and we hope that this initiative will benefit the working class on campus, in D.C., across the United States and around the world.

At the same time, we cannot ignore Georgetown’s history of denying its own workers’ basic rights (until the administration has been forced to act), or their current approach to workers on campus. For example, the university refused to pay janitors and other workers a basic living wage until many of us went on hunger strike for nine days in 2005.

Furthermore, although the strike pressured university officials to draft a new Just Employment Policy, the university was slow to implement the new standards, and still has not fully implemented the policy. In addition, janitors working for the subcontractor used by the university were not able to unionize until 2006. From continuing conversations with current students and workers at Georgetown, we know that despite its altered rhetoric and the creation and promotion of this initiative, Georgetown’s record when it comes to allowing workers on campus to exercise their rights freely is far from satisfactory.

Department of Public Safety officers are renegotiating their union contract with the university. They want to bring their wages in line with security officers’ at other universities in the area — a reasonable demand. Instead of taking leadership on this issue, Georgetown refuses to agree to this wage increase. (And it even refuses to fix the leaks in the DPS offices that allow sewage to seep in.)

Also troubling is the longstanding pattern of threats and intimidation campus workers face when standing up for their rights — an unacceptable trend on a campus that claims to be committed to the tradition of “care for the whole person.”

During our time as students, we witnessed janitors threatened with firings for speaking publicly about unfairly low wages and security officers disciplined for speaking with students about their desire to form a union. In 2006, the university rejected a policy proposed by students to guarantee the protection against this type of rights abuse. Partially because of the university’s poor leadership, there are many workers on campus, such as ARAMARK cafeteria employees, who have been denied the power, respect on the job, protections and voice that come with union membership.

ARAMARK continues to refuse to talk to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an organization of workers who pick tomatoes in Florida. Over the years, the coalition has forced numerous fast food restaurants and food-service companies to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes in order to improve wages and working conditions in the fields of central Florida. One campus food-service provider, Compass Group, has already agreed to pay the extra penny, joining fast food giants like McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell. Georgetown has yet to place pressure on its subcontractor, ARAMARK, to do the same.

Georgetown ought to keep workers’ rights in mind. It can show that it has a real commitment to doing so by taking action. We hope that the launching of the Kalmanovitz Initiative will be a call to such action for the university, so that it can become a leader among universities and employers through its relationship with its own employees and with the working poor around the world.

Virginia Leavell and Michael Wilson are 2005 graduates of the College.

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