Lesley University rebrands with creativity, but not much responsibility for its workers

Lesley University is rebranding! It has a new logo and advertising campaign and an exciting new reputation for paying slave wages.

Last month in was adjunct professors who came before the City Council seeking support for unionization efforts. The university’s full-time faculty makes up as little as 37 percent of its actual teaching staff, with adjuncts making up the rest for just a few thousand dollars per class – and, as teachers testified – subject to last-minute cancellations that can waste hours of preparation and leave them scrambling.

On Monday, the complaints were coming from workers for Bon Appetit, which does food services for Lesley, who spoke of earning as little as $9 per hour, resulting in the need for second jobs and 80-hour workweeks.

“This is the first job I’ve taken where I feel they don’t care about the workers,” said Randy Wright, 53, who testified to earning less than $20,000 per year and having no option but to live in a rooming house in the worst part of Dorchester. “I don’t feel safe, but I can’t afford to live anywhere else. I would love to live in Cambridge, but I can’t afford it. I love cooking, I love my job, but I need to be able to support myself and live in dignity.”

No comment …

While talks between Bon Appetit and the workers’ union drag on into their 11th month, Lesley takes a hands-off approach. John Sullivan, director of communications for the university, said Tuesday, Lesley had no comment “out of deference to the collective-bargaining process.”

“Lesley University respects the collective-bargaining process between the two parties, and any comment about that process and the status of those negotiations should come from either or both of those two parties,” he said.

That approach isn’t pleasing Lesley professors such as Eleanor Roffman. “To be a silent witness to damage to people who provide our food for us every day is really an injustice,” Roffman said, even more bluntly calling it “remaining silent in the face of injustice.”

It’s also not working for students such as senior Theresa Powers, who noted:

It’s really difficulty to be proud of a school whose actions don’t line up with the values that they preach. I think that it’s absolutely ridiculous and appalling that these workers are suffering and are feeding me every day but can’t afford to put food on the table for their own families.

Tuesday brought the announcement that adjunct professors voted 359-67 to unionize, following part-timers at Tufts. They could soon see a serious boost to their bargaining power if faculty follow their example at enough other institutions throughout Greater Boston, where adjunct faculty makes up 67 percent of teachers, according to the Service Employees International Union.

Sullivan has said Lesley supports adjunct faculty’s right to union representation in their working relationship with the university. That non-position is essentially the same as Lesley’s non-answer about Bon Appetit, in that both distance Lesley from the struggle of workers on its campuses as though the school was powerless. This is nonsense, and city councillor Marc McGovern – who also spoke an a campus rally for the workers Feb. 13 – was absolutely right to call the university on the offensiveness of this line of reasoning, which he said he’d heard straight from two Lesley officials even before Sullivan’s statement:

Lesley’s position is that ‘We subcontract to Bon Appetit, and these workers work for Bon Appetit, so it’s not our problem.’ Well, if you hire someone to do a job for you and that person that you hire is mistreating their employees, you absolutely have a responsibility to get involved. You are paying that contractor with university funds, and they are blatantly mistreating their workers. So Lesley hiding behind collectively bargaining … is absolutely an incomprehensible position, and I find it very frustrating they’re not willing to step up to the plate on this.

… but new marketing

Can marketing make up for this?

Lesley’s new logo (see it below the old, at left) is a simple pair of tilted, three-dimensional “L” for “Lesley” shapes formed into mirrored less-than and more-than symbols suggesting a cube and unfortunately reminiscent of an optical illusion. (There’s also a new typeface.) In the weird, effortful language of marketing, this is described in a press release this month as “the culmination of months of research and conversations with thousands of of university stakeholders [into an] eye-catching logo [that] captures the creative, collaborative community of freethinkers, educators, artists and counselors who make up our alumni, students, faculty and staff. It is designed to communicate Lesley’s commitment to creativity and interdisciplinary instruction.”

Bizarrely, nowhere in the 500-plus words it takes to explain the sheer excitement one should feel looking at this logo does it mention that the symbols making it up are also arrows, even though that’s blatantly their use in the video that introduces the concept:

The university also makes it weird when it comes to moving the marketing into the real world in giant signs at the Harvard T stop on the red line.

The idea is to take immediately identifiable phrases and replace a key word in it with the word “creativity,” which Lesley says it’s now all about.

This may be okay when a sign urges you to “Commit random acts of creativity” but gets awkward fast when you see that “We hold creativity to be self-evident” and that “Creativity is worth a thousand words.” (Also: “Nobody puts creativity in a corner”? Why not “Creativity, James Creativity,” or “I love the smell of creativity in the morning”?)

Cowardice and complicity in human misery is probably not what President Joseph Moore was thinking of for a rebranding. But the university’s name is getting increasingly dirtied by its inaction, and new font and some curious slogans aren’t going to correct that in the long run – especially when the amount of thought going into a logo and font choice doesn’t match up with the thoughtlessness of Lesley’s approach to its workers.

How about a little less creativity and a little more responsibility?

Fast-food workers need organizers, advocates

In nearly a decade of working at the Burger King across from the Boston Common, Kyle King’s hourly pay has risen from $8 to $8.15. Unable to afford rent on a place of his own, the 46-year-old lives with his brother in a small Roxbury apartment. Fed up, King decided to join a one-day nationwide strike of fast food workers last August and told the Globe as much. Things at work then went from bad to worse for King.

The day after he appeared in the newspaper, King arrived at Burger King for a scheduled shift only to be told to go home; he wouldn’t be needed that day. In the weeks that followed, he saw his 20-hour schedule whittled down to fewer than nine hours per week.

About 4 miles away, Georgina Guiterrez, a prep cook at the Burger King on Washington Street in Dorchester, believes she has faced similar payback. She says the owner of that franchise called workers who chose to strike “traitors.” Guiterrez earns $8.25 an hour after four years on the job; she received a 25-cent raise in August when the owner was trying to persuade her not to strike. She did anyway, and since then has seen her hours halved from 38 to barely 20 some weeks. That has been devastating to Guiterrez, who supports her disabled mother and three nieces and nephews with her Burger King pay. (Neither the chain nor the franchisees in question responded to requests for comment.)

According to the US Department of Labor, fewer than 2 percent of food service workers are unionized. It shows. Employees like King and Guiterrez are at a major disadvantage when demanding better pay and working conditions. Average wages in the sector have stagnated at just above the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, for two decades. About 13 percent of fast-food workers have employer-sponsored health benefits, compared with 59 percent of the workforce as a whole. Whether through traditional unions or some other vehicle, one of the quickest ways to improve the lot of most restaurant employees would be for them to band together.

Larger unions often have trouble making inroads into restaurants because of the small-scale nature of the business, with its mom-and-pop eateries and franchised fast-food outlets. Fortunately, less conventional advocates for workers are filling the gap.

One promising example is New York-based Restaurant Opportunities Center United, which recently expanded its efforts to Boston. The advocacy group is probably best known for a $5.25 million settlement it helped win against celebrity chef Mario Batali in 2012 after servers at several of Batali’s famed restaurants alleged their employer had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, in part by pocketing gratuities. Beyond its workplace justice campaigns, however, ROC-United offers its 10,000 nationwide members benefits such as free job training and an affordable health plan. In Boston, this work should complement local immigrant worker centers, which already help collect unpaid wages, connect employees to enforcement agencies, and provide multilingual education on workers’ rights.

To see the impact that better organizing can have, one needn’t look much farther than Boston’s college campuses. Traditional unions have had the most success organizing food service workers at large institutions, such as hotels, hospitals, and universities. Boston’s Unite Here Local 26 has negotiated collective bargaining agreements on behalf of food workers at several local schools, including Harvard, Northeastern, Brandeis, and MIT. “What we found in non-union settings were pay rates that ranged from $9 to $11 and health benefits with premiums, co-pays, and deductibles so high the employees couldn’t afford them,” says Brian Lang, Local 26’s president.

With Local 26’s help, Lang says, pay has risen significantly, employees’ share of their health coverage has dropped to as little as $4 a week, and workers are ensured regular schedules, including set days off. As union members, they also have access to legal help, low-interest loans to buy homes, and educational initiatives such as English lessons and GED prep.

Up to now, unions have generally shied away from trying to organize fast-food workers one independently owned franchise at a time. But what if they set their sights higher? Chains like McDonald’s, KFC, and Burger King already dictate many details of franchise operations, from staff uniforms to marketing to the prices they can charge for certain menu items. If they wanted, national fast-food chains could also insist that franchisees abide by collectively bargained wage standards. The main thing preventing the chains from negotiating such agreements is the likely rise in worker salaries.

Fortunately, the National Labor Relations Board came to Kyle King’s aid. Under the Obama administration, the panel has recognized that, even though the might of labor has declined, workers’ rights still need protection. It has emphasized key parts of the National Labor Relations Act that allow for any employees to join together and seek better terms, with or without a union, says Boston labor attorney Louis Mandarini, who filed a complaint with the board on King’s behalf.

Because King was exercising his right to contact the media about inadequate working conditions, the NLRB complaint prompted the owners of the Burger King franchise where he works to settle with King. He will have his pay reinstated for the day he was sent home after the Aug. 29 strike, and Burger King has committed to upping King’s weekly hours significantly.

But it’s crucial to note who connected King to his legal representation: MassUniting, a local labor group financed in part by the Service Employees International Union. As King put it, “I wouldn’t have even known I had these rights if someone hadn’t been there to tell me.”

Lesley’s food service workers ask Cambridge council for union help

Food service workers at Lesley University came before the Cambridge City Council Monday, Feb. 24, to ask for their support in contract negotiations they say have stalled.

According to the policy order, submitted by councilors Marc McGovern and Denise Simmons, the workers voted to join Unite Here Local 26 in March last year. They’ve been trying to negotiate a contract ever since, several members said at the Monday night meeting.

Randy Wright, a cook at Lesley, said that he had never been treated with as much disrespect as in the last five years working for Bon Appetit, the company Lesley contracts for its dining services. Wright said he’s been a cook for 35 years.

“This is the first job I’ve worked where they really don’t care about their employees,” Wright said. “I only make $17,000 a year and I live in a rooming house in the worst part of Dorchester. I don’t feel safe. I’d love to live in Cambridge, but I can’t afford it.”

Lesley faculty member, Eleanor Roffman, described the inability of the university to pay its lowest-paid workers a livable wage a “grave injustice.” Lesley student Theresa Powers said it was ridiculous that these workers were feeding her every day and yet didn’t have enough money to feed their own families.

“It’s really difficult to be proud of a school whose actions don’t line up with the values that they preach,” Powers said. “It’s really important that Lesley make a change.”

Lesley University director of communications, John Sullivan, declined to comment.

“We respect the collective bargaining process so any comment on this situation really should come from the parties at the bargaining table, Bon Appetit and the union representing Bon Appetit’s employees,” Sullivan said.

Councilor McGovern said he was frustrated Lesley wasn’t “willing to step up to the plate” and intervene in the contract negotiations.

“If you hire someone to do a job for you, and that person is mistreating their employees, you absolutely have a responsibility to get involved,” McGovern said. “You are paying that subcontractor with university funds, and they are blatantly mistreating their workers.”

Ed Fogarty, the general manager for Bon Appetit at Lesley, also declined to comment and deferred further questions to Bonnie Powell, director of communications for Bon Appetit.

“We can’t comment on either employee compensation, which is confidential, or on ongoing union negotiations,” Fogarty said. Powell offered the same response.

The City Council unanimously passed a policy to “go on record expressing support for food service workers at Lesley University as they strive for a better life and calling on university leadership to facilitate a just and expeditious settlement between the workers and their employer.”

Cambridge City Council Passes Labor Resolutions

The Cambridge City Council passed two resolutions Monday night that backed local labor unions struggling to negotiate with employers.

The first resolution voiced support for food service workers at Lesley University, who have complained of inadequate compensation and a lack of cooperation from University officials.

Last March, the service workers joined a union for local hospitality workers to demand better pay, affordable health insurance, job security, and a 40-hour work week. But the move generated little change in their situation, according to workers who attended Monday’s meeting.

Many of the workers who spoke Monday argued that the median hourly wage paid by Lesley—$11.06 per hour—is not a living wage, forcing them to take multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Randy Wright, who lives in Dorchester, said that he has been a cook for 35 years and has worked at Lesley for the last five. He told the Council that he cannot afford to live in Cambridge on his less than $20,000 per year salary.

Community members and students also spoke on behalf of the service workers.

“It’s difficult to be proud of a school whose actions don’t line up with the values that they preach,” said Theresa Powers, a student at Lesley University. “It is appalling that these workers feed me every day but can’t put food on their own plates.”

Lesley Cafeteria Workers Wonder How Long Is Long Enough?

This past Friday afternoon, a delegation of workers, students and faculty members marched to the offices of Lesley University to deliver a petition containing the signatures of 522 community members demanding fair working conditions and a living wage for cafeteria members at the university. The petition was to be presented to Vice President for Administration Marylou Batt who was either unable or unwilling to accept the petition. The petition was originally to be delivered following last week’s rally for fair pay, but because of weather conditions, administrators had left before participants had a chance to speak to them.

 On this occasion, however, delegates were able to speak to John Sullivan, Director of Communications, a representative of the university. As workers expressed frustrations over unfair compensation and their inability to afford basic necessities such as health insurance, their concerns seemed to fall on deaf ears. Director Sullivan claimed, as Lesley University has in the past, that Lesley has little to no control over how Bon Appétit (the agency hired to provide food services at the university) compensates their workers, despite the fact that in past union negotiations, Bon Appétit stated that Lesley did not allow them to pay their workers any more than they were already paying.

 This game of passing the buck has been going on since the negotiations began almost a year ago. Neither Bon Appétit nor Lesley University is willing to take responsibility for the fact that their workers do not receive a living wage.

When a union organizer called attention to this standstill, Sullivan responded with, “From our perspective, eight months isn’t that long.” How long should these workers expect to wait before they can afford to pay their rent or feed their families?

On Monday, February 24, the Cambridge City Council will be convening, and workers and supporters will be speaking out about these issues. If you support the workers’ right to a fair wage and you are a student, faculty member or ally from the city of Cambridge, you are encouraged to come to the meeting at 5:30 in Cambridge City Hall where your voice will be heard.

photo by Lilly Christopher, taken at Bon Appetit workers rally