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Catholic social teaching says union membership is not just a right of workers, but benefits society as a whole.
So why are cafeteria workers at Xavier University, a Catholic institution, still without a union more than a year after organizers first began talking to them?
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 12 started speaking to cafeteria workers at XU in September 2000, according to Ryan Nissim-Sabat, union organizer. Sodexho, which holds the school’s food-service contract, employs about 110 cafeteria workers at XU.
“Right now they have no right to negotiate anything,” Nissim-Sabat says. “It is whatever Sodexho says.”
Complaints of pay raises based on favoritism, expensive health care coverage and general disrespect are common among the cafeteria workers, according to Nissim-Sabat.
Organizers want XU to require Sodexho to recognize the union if a majority of workers sign cards indicating they want it — known as a card check/neutrality agreement. The stipulation would mean Sodexho doesn’t interfere, allowing workers to decide whether they want a union.
Sodexho has the lowest percentage of unionized workers of the three major food service companies, according to Nissim-Sabat.
“It’s not because workers don’t want a union,” he says. “It’s because Sodexho is notorious for fighting workers. They want to delay because they’re anti-union. Sodexho has been clear about that.”
But Leslie Aun, spokesperson for Sodexho, says the union accusations are false.
“I’m tired of hearing Sodexho’s anti-union, because it’s not true,” Aun says. “We’re not anti-union. We have over 240 collective bargaining agreements with unions across the United States.”
The company opposes a card-check election, in which employees sign cards in front of their peers, saying it pressures employees who might not want a union.
“It’s very hard in a group dynamic to be the one person who says, ‘I don’t want to sign this card,’ ” she says.
Nissim-Sabat scoffs. The real pressure comes not from union organizers but from employers, he says.
“A company with a power over people’s livelihoods is very different, for instance, than a union’s power,” Nissim-Sabat says. “I have no power over anybody.”
Sodexho prefers a secret ballot conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But that, Nissim-Sabat says, is a stall tactic, giving the company time to launch an anti-union campaign to intimidate workers.
Aun asserts the company has the right to give workers its perspective, just as the union does.
“I think hearing multiple views on an issue is kind of the American way,” she says.
Although Aun says the company would prefer to deal directly with employees, she says it would negotiate in good faith if employees elected to join a union.
“The decision to join a union is a very important one,” she says. “If the employees in the NLRB election decide to unionize, we will immediately begin to negotiate with them in good faith. We have a very — we believe — positive and progressive attitude toward unions.”
‘Xavier has just stalled’
XU has formed a group known as Justice Across the Campus to deal with the issue. Committee member Irene Hodgson chairs a subcommittee that has been invited to meetings with students and Sodexho representatives. The goal of the subcommittee is to come up with a model to deal with the Sodexho contract and other contracts in terms of workers’ rights.
Justice Across the Campus is expected to report to the Rev. Michael Graham, president of XU, in December. Graham declined requests for an interview.
The Rev. Benjamin Urmston, S.J., director of peace and justice programs at XU, says he would like Justice Across the Campus to look into not just the cafeteria workers’ situation but also the rights of farmers and food processing workers.
“All of us are concerned about being just to the workers who serve us,” Urmston says. “We’re looking not just about one corporation but about any future contract that we would have with any company in the future.”
Members of the subcommittee have good intentions, but the solution to this conflict is simple, Nissim-Sabat says.
“The Pope has been clear that unions are indispensable,” he says. “They heard why workers want to make changes. To think that they are going to come up with a decision over whether workers should have a union or not is ridiculous. Our question is, if a majority of workers sign union cards, why isn’t that good enough? Why don’t they just uphold their Catholic social teachings? That’s our whole point.”
Nissim-Sabat believes the time for XU to act is now.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” he says. “We can only believe that their delay is because they don’t want to stand on the side of workers. This could have been solved long ago by Xavier standing behind its principles. Xavier has just stalled and their stalling has denied workers the right to organize.”
According to Aun, Sodexho was created from a merger in 1997 of Marriott Management Services and Sodexho North America. Aun says Sodexho has never contested an NLRB election.
But the Catholic Church is clear on workers’ rights, according to Sister Monica McGloin, O.P.
“It is part of the basic teaching of the Catholic (faith) as well as many other religious traditions,” says McGloin, a member of the Cincinnati Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.
Because XU is a Jesuit University, McGloin says the school should treat workers in accord with Catholic ideals.
“Not only do workers have the right to organize, but it’s also a good thing,” she says.
Workers having a say in their employment has to deal with their human dignity, according to McGloin — “not simply working for someone, but actually having a say in the policies that guide their workplace and the pay and the benefits.”
Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk recently discussed workers’ rights.
“I was struck by that,” McGloin says. “Why it is being stalled at Xavier, I do not know.”
McGloin believes society is moving toward an unfounded fear of unions.
“We’ve developed an adversarial relationship with unions,” she says. “What they say often sounds as if they see themselves as having to protect the worker from the union. It feels like many people at Xavier see the workers as these somewhat helpless people who can’t speak for themselves. Really the union is the workers. The real issue is workers have the right to organize.”
Sister Denise Starkey, O.P., coordinator of the religious employers project for the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, has met with XU officials. Starkey believes the card check/neutrality process would be the fairest route.
“It gives the workers an opportunity to really say what they want in terms of unions and organizing,” she says.
NLRB elections, according to Starkey, are less beneficial.
“Our experience and study shows that those elections and that process benefits the employer,” she says. “It’s all about delays and tactics.”
The Rev. George Higgins, longtime labor activist, agrees.
“I am very much in favor of the card check approach,” Higgins says. “I think it’s a sensible way of handling labor relations. I think it stops much of the wrangling that goes on in an election period.”
Starkey met with an XU official who, she says, assured her workers would have a voice.
“My disappointment and the locals’ disappointment is that that has not materialized,” she says. “It’s a human rights issue, because workers have the right to organize. They have a moral and ethical right.” ©
This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2001.