NEWS: Over 100 Georgetown students joined Aramark employees in a march on February 18th to demand better working conditions for food service workers at Hoya Court. The march ended at the Aramark office on Georgetown’s campus with the delivery of two petitions. One demanded union representation for the workers, while the other petition, signed by over 2,000 students and community members, supports the renegotiation of work conditions for workers at Leo’s, one of the restaurants at the Hoya Court. Those conditions include a 40-hour paid work week, an increase in health care benefits, protection of immigrant workers, anti-discrimination rules and greater involvement in food sustainability discussions on campus. UNITE HERE is the same union that Aramark workers from Leo’s, Cosi and Starbucks joined in March 2011. Negotiations regarding the workers’ demands were scheduled to begin last Friday.
Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1912, women and children textile strikers were beaten by Lawrence, Massachusetts police during a 63-day walkout protesting low wages and work speedups. In 1919, Congress passed a federal child labor tax law that imposed a 10 percent tax on companies that employ children, defined as anyone under the age of 16 working in a mine or quarry or under the age 14 in a “mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment.” The Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional three years later. Today's labor quote is by Robert Reich: “If companies have a moral responsibility not to fill the movie theater and airwaves with violence and moral degradation, do they not also have a responsibility to keep workers employed when profits are rising? A moral responsibility to upgrade worker skills, an obligation to fully fund pension plans, to provide health care?” Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.
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