Massachusetts - School Workers Vanquish Privateer

Salem, Massachusetts

Embracing Victory - Jyll Hudson (right),head cook at Salem High School, hugs Collins Middle School head cook Karen Cleary after the Salem School Committee voted solidly against privatization of food services.
Photo Credit: Matt Viglianti/Salem News

It was a case of David vs. Goliath: 27 cafeteria workers employed by Salem Public Schools, joined by a handful of determined parents, squashed a private firm’s threat to take over their food service operations.

The trouble began when the school superintendant proposed outsourcing food services to stem losses from the food program that had reached nearly $650,000. The employees — members of Local 294 (Council 93) — knew they needed help to stand up to Chartwells, a subsidiary of United Kingdom-based Compass Group PLC, that vied to win the contract.

Head cook Deborah Jeffers at the Horace Mann Laboratory School in Salem, and vice president of Local 294, points out that the union members, who are also parents of school kids, decided to join forces with other parents because “that’s who the school system is going to listen to.”

In tandem, the parents and some members “contacted newspapers, made a lot of phone calls and sent hundreds of e-mails to the school committee” to persuade its members to keep the services in-house, says Jeffers.

But Chartwells offered the school district a plum to capture the contract: a $66,000 payment next year, even if its operations lost money. Jeffers says that was just a ploy to get officials to overlook the fact that Chartwells would not provide the same wages or benefits that employees were already entitled to receive.

When that fact became clear to school officials, Chartwells submitted a new plan that maintained the existing wage/benefit scales. But the company backed out of its promise to pay the school district $66,000. In June, the school committee voted 6-1 against Chartwells’ proposal, and gave the worker/parent group one year to prove that they can operate food services profitably — something Jeffers believes they can do.

Jeffers will be taking a year’s leave of absence to be the interim food services director.