By Anon
At some point, despite the chaotic unfolding of an uncertain future, students (you) will arrive on campus. You will unpack your belongings, meet hallway neighbors, navigate campus. When you join Penn, you will go to dining halls alone, with friends, to pick up food and leave, or to stay for a while. All new students, equipped with mandatory meal plans, will enter dining halls several times per day, every day. With every meal, you come face to face with a person in a Penn Dining uniform. Many students will undoubtedly look past these workers, paying no mind to those who enable their smoothly functioning lives. Or, you might put in the effort to get to know the many employees that make up a Penn dining hall. “What’s your name? How are you doing today?” You might reciprocate the questions that they will ask you, or even make a friend!
But even for students who cherish these consistent, caring interactions, it can still be easy to avoid structural questions — how exactly are they employed? How are they treated? This picture is far darker than the one their smiles may show.
First, it is important to note a significant distinction between dining hall workers. While they all come to work in uniforms inscribed with “Penn Dining,” they are not all actually employed by Penn. The workers in the “residential” dining halls (the all-you-can-eat spots) are employed by Penn, while the workers in the “retail” dining halls are subcontracted by the company Bon Appetit.* Subcontracting is a practice in which a company, i.e. Penn, will pay another business, i.e. Bon Appetit, to perform the task, instead of hiring workers directly.
This seemingly small detail drastically changes the position of the workers, removing all of Penn’s accountability to the people wearing their uniforms. In any question of worker mistreatment or exploitation, Penn can simply say, they aren’t our employees, take it up with Bon Appetit. But who is Bon Appetit? They are based out of California and are part of the umbrella company Compass, a UK company that employs over a half million people. They are distant, enormous, and much harder to fight.
The question of worker mistreatment and exploitation by Bon Appetit is far from hypothetical. One only needs to listen to the worker’s words to understand this:
We are underpaid, and we work like slaves in that kitchen.
I’m getting harassed every day, every day, every day. Every. Day.
They line you up to get fired.
I’m just a dollar sign to them.
I really think it’s time for a change.**
The hourly wages of workers we’ve talked to ranges from $11.90 to $18.50, the latter from an employee of 20 years who has served meals at Penn since before the incoming class was born. These are not living wages in the city of Philadelphia.
It is also no coincidence that it is predominantly Black workers that are exploited to this extent. The proportion of Black staff members vastly outnumbers the proportion of Black faculty, especially in service positions like dining staff. Relegating Black Philadelphians to the lowest paying jobs reinforces the power and class disparities inherent in Black people serving a predominantly non-Black student body. As the school continues to drive gentrification in West Philadelphia, their very own workers cannot afford to live in their own communities and neighborhoods. Bon Appetit routinely mistreats the workers too, breaking contract policies by denying sick days, ignoring worker seniority, and steadfastly avoiding Workers’ Comp. They wield these abuses as a bully unafraid of retaliation, emboldened by Penn’s negligence.
The poverty wages are not because Penn cannot afford to pay workers better. Penn has a $14.7 billion endowment and increases this amount exponentially — by $873 million in 2019 alone. The president Amy Gutmann makes $3.9 million per year. In 2018, the school renovated the Houston Hall cafeteria, operated by Bon Appetit workers, for $15 million. New College House West cost the university a record-breaking $163 million, despite the lack of demand for more campus housing. Even substantial wage increases for dining hall workers would be mere drops in the bucket. It is not that they cannot pay, it is that they won’t.
None of this is to say that things are entirely better for the other group of Penn Dining employees; workers directly employed by Penn also face the brunt of capitalist exploitation as well. It must be understood that this stratification of workers serves to hurt all of the workers. When they deal with different bosses, wages, work statuses and precariousness, it is harder to organize together and demand fair treatment. Issues of worker exploitation are present in every aspect of the university, from the security guards who let you into your dorm to the maintenance people to the grad students who TA or teach your classes — everywhere. The very system relies on this extraction of wealth from the workers in order to profit and grow.
When interacting with the workers, basic respect is important but insufficient. We need to join them in their struggle. Students are able to leverage their position as customers of the university, i.e. use how the university treats and views students, in order to amplify the demands of workers. It is crucial that we work together, supporting the workers in their fight for fair wages and treatment. Any fight against labor exploitation must center worker experiences and demands; there are real lives and consequences at stake, so students should not push their own performative agendas or attempt to absolve themselves of guilt.
And this work is possible; when the school abruptly shut down due to COVID in March, Bon Appetit immediately decided to lay off their workers, abandoning them when they needed help the most. After weeks of multifaceted pressure through various student-led campaigns, Penn’s hand was forced and they agreed to support the workers through the semester. Penn has the resources to permanently support everyone who makes their company run, but they never will unless faced with pressure from radical opposition.
*The one exception to this is the Falk Dining Hall in Hillel, which is run by Bon Appetit.
**These quotes are from various conversations and meetings between workers and the Student Labor Action Project in the Spring of 2019
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