By Bob Seidenberg
Veronica Reyes, a longtime resident of the city, has worked the past 15 years as a cashier in food service for Northwestern University.
When the university replaced food service operators Sodexo and Aramark with the Compass Group in 2018, she told members of the city’s Human Services Committee Wednesday night, “there was no warranty that we will able to keep our jobs.”
“It was very scary and stressful,” she said, speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting. About 50 fellow members of hospitality and food service workers were in the audience at the meeting at the civic center to show support.
“My stomach was in knots for months,” she said. “I felt terrible that we have to fight to keep the jobs that we have been doing for for many years. I don’t want me or my co-workers to go through this again.”
Evanston City Council members voted 8-0 in support of allaying those fears at their Feb. 24 meeting. Council member Juan Geracaris, 9th, cast an abstaining vote.
The council’s Human Services Committee previously voted Feb. 5 in favor of the first-time Workers’ Retention Ordinance designed to protect workers employed in Evanston by institutions with 200 or more contracted positions.
At this time, Northwestern University is the lone institution that fits the definition, officials confirmed.
Institutions such as the school districts and Starbucks Coffee, for instance, either provide services directly and or don’t meet the 200-employee threshold locally.
‘Really important’: Revelle
“I think this is a really important ordinance for us to pass,” offered Council Member Eleanor Revelle (7th Ward), making the motion. “It provides really important job security to some residents who otherwise are really vulnerable.”
With passage, committee members moved the proposal next to council. Ninth Ward Council member Juan Geracaris, who works as a systems administrator for the university, was not present at the meeting.
Council member Clare Kelly, whose First Ward includes a portion of the university, made the original referral that the matter be considered, according to the records of the city’s Referral Committee. Council members Tom Suffredin (6th Ward) and Devon Reid (8th Ward) were co-referrers on the proposed ordinance.
A release from Unite Here Local 1, which represents roughly 500 hospitality and food service workers at the university’s campus who are currently employed by the Compass Group, included a quote from Mayor Daniel Biss.
“This is a commonsense policy that will provide stability for Evanston hospitality and food service workers,” the mayor said. “Protecting these workers’ jobs when a new contractor replaces the prior one will ensure that they and their families can continue to live and thrive in Evanston.” As mayor, Biss wouldn’t vote on the ordinance unless there was a tie vote on the council.
In a memo to the council on the issue, Liza Roberson-Young, the city’s chief legislative policy analyst, said the proposal would be the first of its kind by a government unit in Illinois. A number of cities in other states have adopted a similar ordinance, she said, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, and Baltimore.
How it would work
“The proposed ordinance is intended to provide job security for workers employed by food service or hospitality contractors at large institutions,” Roberson-Young wrote, explaining the proposal’s rationale. “When these institutions change contractors, workers are at an increased risk of losing their jobs, which in turn creates instability for those workers, their families and the community.
“The ordinance would address this problem by requiring that the new contractor retain the previous contractor’s existing workforce for a 90-day transition period,” she noted. “During those 90 days, the successor contractor must pay workers at least the same wages and fringe benefits they received from the previous contractor. At the end of the transition period, the new contractor must offer continued employment to those workers if their performance during the 90-day period is satisfactory.”
“The successor contractor may still fire a worker for cause during the 90-day period, and may also retain only some of the previous contractor’s workers based on classification and seniority if it does not need as many employees to perform the awarded contract.”
The ordinance protects hospitality, food service, and janitorial workers employed in Evanston by institutions with 200 or more contracted positions. It would not apply to any businesses that employ fewer than 200 contracted workers in the aggregate.
Any contractor who violated the ordinance would be subject to a fine of between $300 and $500 for an initial offense, with subsequent fines increasing $50 for each new offense.
Cases would be heard before the city-administered Administrative Adjudication court, officials said.
Where responsibility would fall
The onus is one the contractor in this case, said Roberson-Young. The successor contractor in such a case would retain the previous contractor’s existing workforce for a 90-day period, under the proposal, she said, “and during those 90 days the successor contractor would pay those workers at least the same wages and fringe benefits they received from the original contractor. Then at the end of the 90 days, the new contractor would offer continued employment to workers if their performance during the transition period was satisfactory, she said.
Council member Reid sought additional details about which employees would be covered under the ordinance. How does this apply to a franchise, he asked, offering Starbucks, as an example.
Starbucks would not be covered, not falling under the thresholds of 200 employees, officials said. Other institutions not covered under the proposed ordinance include the hospitals and the local school districts, which employ food service workers directly.
During citizen comment, Dan Abraham, organizing director with Unite Here Local 1, and also a resident of the city, said his family located in Evanston with its diverse nature a major factor.
‘Panic in people’s eyes’
“I am proud to live in a city that’s not only Northwestern University professors and administrators,” he said, speaking during citizen comment, “but also Northwestern University cooks and dishwashers and housekeepers. There aren’t many places like that. And every year it gets harder and harder, less and less affordable for those housekeepers, cooks and dishwashers to live here,” he said.
The workers on the university’s campus are people of color and immigrants, the union said in a followup release — with 30% identifying as Black or African-American, 28% as Latino or Hispanic and 6% as Asian.
On average, the workers have 9.6 years of experience.
“I remember only a couple of years before the pandemic, when the university decided to change contractors,” Abraham said, “and contracted employees asked me, ‘Am I getting fired? Am I getting fired?’ I have the leaflets here if you want to see them,” he told committee members. “I’ll never forget the fear and panic in people’s eyes. Those workers organized together and saved their jobs, but only for that day. Today, there is still no guarantee that people who have spent years or decades working at the university will not be gone tomorrow, not because of some misconduct on their part or university budgetary shortfall, but simply because they lack a simple protection under the law.”
Leading up to Wednesday’s action, workers have staged several actions seeking to bring attention to their plight. Last November, about 100 workers picketed along Sheridan Road in support of greater protections in their contract with Compass.
On Wednesday, Reyes, who has worked as a cashier at the Foster-Walker dining hall on Northwestern’s campus, told committee members she feels like more than an employee through the connections she has made.
“I will never forget how a former student — now a doctor — came back to campus to introduce me to her younger sister, who had just started her freshman year,” she said. “We don’t just serve the students. We often become their family, especially for students who may be feeling lonely or sad being away from home.”
