Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 7/13/2022
SOUTH HADLEY – Mount Holyoke College dining and facilities workers rallied at the college on July 6 to demand wage increases after their contracts expired on June 30. Service workers, students, faculty and passing cars showed their solidarity in the fight for fair pay along with 32BJ Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Executive Vice President Roxana Rivera. According to Rivera, the university has roughly 160 service workers that are now working without a contract after serving the university throughout COVID-19.
“Our goal is to win a just contract that recognizes their contribution as essential workers in very uncertain times,” Rivera said. “We are asking the college to continue negotiations even though workers are working without a contract right now since it expired last Thursday. We are looking forward to going back to negotiations at the end of this week, and again our goal is for their work to be recognized and for us to win a just contract. All of the pandemic took a toll on these families and enough is enough. People are saying they’re ready to fight.”
Rivera added that the college has a $1 billion endowment and has yet to recognize the contributions of its essential workers, saying that the workers understand the solid footing of the university and are deserving of higher wages.
Peter Cowley has been a carpenter and locksmith with the university for almost 30 years, and said he has dealt with nearly every aspect of facilities over his tenure. He said the workers generally love working there but need to be paid appropriately.
“We’re out here trying to get the college to agree to a fair wage increase for us, as it stands right now they’ve been reluctant to negotiate with our union as far as how much increase we should get, they basically have said, ‘This is what you’re getting and that’s it,’ they haven’t really negotiated,” Cowley said. “With the cost of living, inflation and everything that’s gone up for us if we don’t get a fair wage increase, we’re going to be making less in our pocket than we were prior. Us, like everybody else, we all need to be able to make ends meet. We’ve always taken the low-ball road on our agreements with our contracts, but we’ve always been there for them, and during this COVID[-19] era we’re essential personnel and we needed to be here, so we were.”
As chants of “What do we want? Contracts! When do we want them? Now!” and “No contracts, no peace!” continued from protestors lining Route 116 in front of the college, Mount Holyoke student Serynn Nowlin said she started a petition two months ago, which has garnered over 1,000 signatures. The petition calls for higher wages for the dining and facilities workers, saying that incoming housekeepers make minimum wage, dish room workers make $15.51 an hour, salad bar workers make $17.49 an hour and all cooks make $23.57 an hour regardless of experience level. Nowlin was a student-worker in the dining halls and became familiar with some of the personalities and struggles of the workers.
“I think anyone, regardless of the work they do, deserves a living wage and that’s not what’s being shown at Mount Holyoke,” Nowlin said. “On top of that, the people at Mount Holyoke’s dining facilities are some of the kindest people here, they genuinely care for the students, they really want to make personal connections. They’re some of the best facilities and staff in general that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. It’s really disappointing to see them leave and see them not be able to sustain themselves when they are quite literally the backbone of this college and the ones taking care of us and making sure that we are housed and fed.”
Custodial worker Maureen Picard has been with Mount Holyoke for four years and recalled the increased responsibility service workers were tasked with. Picard said she cleaned all the isolation rooms with one other person throughout the pandemic and only received hazard pay for six weeks. Picard described being “shocked” that the university was at a standstill with the union contract demands of the workers.
“I didn’t think there would be a problem,” Picard said. “A handful of us all worked through COVID, there were students here, people were doing work here and we worked. There was only five of us in custodial and there were other people here, because without facilities you can’t run. We allow them to do their job, so even the testing center that allowed students to come back, testing everybody, the staff, the faculty and the students, most of the staff in there was from facilities. We not only did our job, we were testing people to make sure it stayed safe so I was shocked that they’re not even arguing, they’re not saying anything. It was dumbfounding.”
Ariya Lawson and Audrey Maney-Hernandez are both Mount Holyoke alums that said they wanted to show solidarity with the workers. Before graduating in 2018, Lawson worked in the dining commons and connected with many of the workers that were rallying. Maney-Hernandez graduated in 2014 and currently works in the admissions office.
“Everyone in this community benefits from the work that our facilities management team and our dining service workers put in, we all eat the food, we all enjoy the grounds, the college touts how beautiful a campus we are, we get national recognition for that and to be unfairly compensated is not acceptable,” Lawson said.
Maney-Hernandez added, “I’ve become aware of this fight primarily through students who are organizing on behalf of the staff here and doing a wonderful job advocating for them and amplifying their struggle and needs. Our office has been communicating with our visitors, making them aware of what’s going on, and I think celebrating the fact that this demonstration and agitation is happening as a college that, in its stated values, promotes equity and justice.”