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CUNY food workers tell of poor conditions

NEW YORK — One cafeteria worker at Kingsborough Community College said he suffered a severe ankle injury after slipping on a grease trap that had not been properly secured, and spent almost five months on disability.

Still another, who graduated from Queens College with a degree in food service management, said her wages were so low that she cannot afford health insurance.

Those are among the anecdotes collected by the first-ever survey of people who work at the cafeterias, coffee shops and kiosks serving tens of thousands of students and faculty throughout the City University of New York system. The survey results were released Wednesday.

CUNY does not provide its own food services, but instead relies on nonprofit organizations at each campus, typically known as auxiliary services corporations, which are affiliated with, but legally separate from, the university. The auxiliary services corporations coordinate and hire the food vendors, whose workers generally are not unionized.

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Conducted by the Retail Action Project, a community organizing group co-founded by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the survey of more than 110 people on 14 campuses — or one-quarter of all CUNY food service workers — reported numerous instances of what it says are workers being served “a steady diet of low wages, few benefits, precarious schedules and labor violations.”

The survey, which took nearly a year to complete, comes as the conditions at CUNY’s cafeterias have increasingly alarmed students, faculty and the others. The main cafeteria at Kingsborough Community College was forced to close for a period in December after the city’s Department of Health found mice and flies. John Jay College announced in January that it would search for a new food service vendor after its Dining Commons received a C inspection rating.

About two dozen workers, meanwhile, testified at a CUNY public hearing in November, charging health violations and making allegations of harassment, wage theft and discrimination. In response, William C. Thompson Jr., CUNY’s chairman, said at a board meeting this month that “outraged” board members were “committed to ensuring that food service workers enjoy dignity in their workplaces on our campus.”

“It is something that we are not going to let slide,” he said.

According to the survey, 19 percent of the workers reported being injured on the job — with most suffering falls, cuts and burns. Nearly half reported an annual household income of under $30,000, and one-fifth said they had more than one job. But only seven workers said that they had health insurance through their job, while about four-fifths said that they received Medicaid.

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“When we learned about the working conditions and health and safety issues at campus food vendors and cafeterias, we were shocked,” said Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. As a result, he said, his union has launched a campaign to “ensure that their workers are treated with dignity and respect and that students and faculty get the services they deserve at CUNY.”

Tightening control over all CUNY-related foundations has been a goal of Thompson, a former city comptroller who was appointed in 2016 by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, since the New York state inspector general criticized the university’s financial practices as “ripe for abuse.” To that end, Thompson said at the board meeting that CUNY would seek to centralize the awarding of future food service contracts, in hopes of identifying two or three vendors who could effectively serve all campuses.

The report recommends that these contracts — including scorecards related to contract compliance — be more easily accessible. It also recommends that CUNY consolidate its contracting process to ensure more accountability.

Two vendors that have been criticized frequently are Metropolitan Food Service and MBJ Food Services, which operate on nine campuses. A CUNY lawyer wrote a sharply worded letter to MBJ in January, expressing concerns about employees who had complained about wages and benefits.

“We expect you to abide by the law and our contracts and not to retaliate against employees,” wrote Jane Sovern, deputy general counsel.

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A representative for MBJ Food Services said that the official in charge of media inquiries was on vacation, and could not be reached for comment. Metropolitan did not return calls.

At the Kings Brew coffee shop at Kingsborough Community College, Katie Del Valle, 24, said that the refrigerator has been broken for months, making her the target of people’s frustrations. And there is constant confusion over whether she and her colleagues will keep their jobs because the vendor’s contract is expiring soon; the latest she heard was that some people would be transferred in April to a cafeteria at Lehman College.

“They still haven’t had a meeting to let us know this is what’s happening, or this is what we can do for you,” said Del Valle. “I hope somebody will just listen to us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

DAVID W. CHEN © 2018 The New York Times

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