On Oct. 29, representatives of American University’s food service provider issued a written statement agreeing to restore the hours of 40 staffers cut at the beginning of the fall semester, returning the health care and retirement benefits that they had lost. 

After Aramark’s announcement, the Student Worker Alliance (SWA) met with Kenneth Chadwick, the resident district manager of Aramark at AU. The group was originally supposed to deliver a letter containing a list of grievances and demands for workers’ rights and better management, but the simple delivery turned into a sit down discussion. Along with SWA, students from Student Government , College Democrats, Community Action and Social Justice Coalition (CASJ) and AU’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attended the meeting to discuss expectations and to raise concerns over the current state of the food service at AU. 

“We have a strong suspicion that the recent outpouring of student support influenced Aramark’s decision,” an SWA member wrote in a mass email. “This shows how much can be accomplished when workers and students stand united.” 

Before the meeting, students stood outside of the Mary Graydon Center holding signs that read: “Respect Our Workers” and “The Union Makes Us Strong.”

Carlos Vera, founder of #ExploitedWonk, a social media campaign that raises awareness of workers’ rights violations at AU, addressed student involvement. He said that at first, SWA was the only organization that focused on workers’ rights at AU. When the group approached other clubs, they would often say that it wasn’t their issue.

However, Vera believes that workers’ rights are every club’s issue because Terrace Dining Room workers serve food for fraternities, sororities, Reserves Officers Training Corps (ROTC) and athletic events, among others. 

“This is a community issue,” Vera said.

Vera believes that since more organizations are getting involved, change is happening. He gave examples of how student mobilization made small gains, such as prompting the administration to inform the AU community of the death of Tijuana Saunders, a TDR worker who passed away last summer. 

AU originally did not send out emails commemorating her service, as is usually the case for deaths among faculty and staff members. An Oct. 2 article in the Eagle reports that the university did not know of Saunders’ death, according to Chris Moody, the assistant vice president of Housing and Dining.

Some students expressed concern over social media, and the university eventually sent an email acknowledging her tenure. It also created a protocol for informing the community of the deaths of Aramark employees in a timely manner, the Eagle reported. 

While Saunders worked at TDR for seven years, Vera noted that some workers have been at AU for almost fifty years. 

“The majority of them are here because they love their job,” he said. “They see it as a duty.” 

Students addressed a culture of disrespect of workers by their supervisors at the meeting with Chadwick, expressing concerns over reports of inconsistent and disrespectful managers, cut hours, schedule changing, understaffing and food shortage. 

“We have, for example, one worker doing desserts when there are three long lines of people trying to get desserts…it takes forever to serve them and it’s a lot of work for one person staffing that area,” a student said. 

One student felt that frequent management turnover was unfair for the workers. 

He compared the effect that turnover rates of the managers had on workers to that of the effect of turnover rates of teachers on a student. He said if he were in a class that kept on changing teachers, he wouldn’t know what they would expect of him and assume that they wouldn’t be invested in his success.  

Despite the challenges still facing staff at the university, students supporters felt that a restoration in workers’ hours was a victory. Leaders of SWA, for example, voiced their approval on the organization’s Facebook page.

“Student Worker Alliance is pleased with the strides that management has made concerning issues with scheduling and benefits,” they wrote.