The new "Workers for Justice" campaign seems to have sprung up overnight at the Claremont Colleges.  The kickoff event was on March 1, when 100-150 Claremont College students **and over half of the Pomona College dining hall staff** marched into the office of Pomona College President David Oxtoby to present him with signed letters and petitions in support of a fairer unionization process for Pomona College dining hall workers.

I asked Morgan Bennett '13 (featured prominently on the WfJ website) about his experience at Monday's rally:

Walking quietly into Pomona President Oxtoby’s office and turning in upwards of 150 signed petitions essentially demanding that the College sign an agreement for a fair unionization process for the workers without intimidation or interference was one of the proudest moments of my life. ... Seeing how all these incredibly passionate students from the five colleges have joined together to stand literally arm in arm with the Pomona dining hall employees, the subjects of this mind-blowingly inhumane mistreatment, reminded me why we need to continue to fight for equality anywhere and everywhere.

Recognizing the already sizable commitment to this campaign for the ethical treatment of the employees is inspiring but at the same time insufficient at the moment.  Working so hard and risking so much, the Pomona dining hall employees are desperately depending on heavy student support so that they might be able to speak freely of the mistreatment that they experience and the injustices they currently witness but are unable to report.

According to their website, WfJ recently performed a survey of 50 of Pomona College dining hall workers with the following results:

• 89% of workers report having been impeded from taking their breaks.

• 7 workers report having been discriminated against by management based on race, age, or sexual orientation.

• 53% of workers report working “off the clock”.

• 28% of workers report having problems with their work schedules and report having irregular hours.

• 34% of workers report having difficulty in securing a promotion or raise. Many assert that there is no procedure for advancement.

• 40% of workers report to have worked as many as seven days in a single week.

• 82% of workers report having been injured on the job. Those injuries include: torn ACLs, cut fingers, burnt faces, alergic reactions, falling down stairs, broken hips, carpel tunnel syndrome, arthritis, and general pain in arms, legs, feet, hands, backs, and heads.

• The 11 workers who did not report their injuries said they didn’t do so because they were either afraid of the repercussions or werediscouraged by management from reporting their injures.

According to Trevor Hunnicutt of The Student Life, Pomona is unlikely to concede:

[President] Oxtoby said a union would mar the progress the college has made in the last year in responding to workers’ concerns.

“The assumption, often, with a union is that everything that you have now you will keep and you will get more — you will have all of the channels of communication and ways of working with the college which we’ve developed over the years,” he said. “I think that’s not correct. I think it’s a little naive.”

... Oxtoby said he opposed the proposal in part because the yay-or-nay votes of individual employees would be public knowledge with “card check,” an assertion that union supporters and labor experts said was not necessarily true.

When asked if the college would agree to the employees’ request, Oxtoby said. “We’re still discussing it, but I do not expect that we will because we support the basic principle of secret-ballot voting processes.... The card-check process is not that type of process.”

He said he could not envision a way for the process to be “truly anonymous.”

From what I can tell, the student leadership is made up of mostly Pomona and Pitzer students, with wider participation spread out among the 5C's.  I've seen many students on several campuses wearing orange arm bands to show their support.   And the facebook group "Students in Solidarity with Workers for Justice", founded by Julie Juarez PO '12, boasts more than 400 members.

From the WfJ website, a well-written explanation of the what the card-check system (blogger's emphasis supplied):

A card-check is a unionization method that grants workers the power to bargain collectively when over 50% of workers sign union cards. Employers are asked to sign a card-check neutrality agreement in order to assure recognition of the results of the card check, and to guarantee that they will not intimidate workers or employ other union-busting techniques. Workers sign cards on their own time in the privacy of their homes and a neutral third-party agreed upon by both parties verifies whether or not a majority is reached. Without such a card-check neutrality agreement, Pomona would have no obligation to recognize a union, even if 100 percent of their employees submit their written support.

According to a student-talk email sent by Paul Waters-Smith '10, Anthony Chavez, grandson of seminal labor rights activist and United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, will be speaking alongside Pomona dining hall workers on Saturday, March 6 at 2:30 pm in Marston Quad at Pomona College in support of the workers' demand for a fair unionization process for unionization.  Dolores Huerta may also join the rally later in the day.

90% of Pomona dining hall workers signed a petition calling on Pomona College to sign a non-intimidation/card-check neutrality agreement which they delivered to College President David Oxtoby's office Monday in a procession with well over 100 student supporters.

My own opinion?   I think it's clear that workers benefit from this additional avenue of unionization.  I signed the petition here.

*Apologies to my loyal readers for the tardiness of this post; I had a minor personal emergency and have been off campus since Thursday morning.  All better now.

**Addended 2 pm, March 7, 2010.