Food service and hospitality workers employed on Northwestern University’s Evanston’s campus cleared another hurdle Monday in their bid for job protection in the event the university changes contractors.
Evanston City Council members voted in favor of introducing the city’s first Workers’ Retention Ordinance, which would require that a new contractor retain the previous contractor’s existing workforce for a 90-day transition.
Council members voted in support of introducing the ordinance as part of their consent agenda, where a list of items considered noncontroversial are passed in a single motion.
The proposal is scheduled to return to the council for a final vote at its next meeting on Feb. 24. Members of the council’s Human Services Committee had previously voted unanimously in favor of the ordinance at their Feb. 5 meeting.
The ordinance would apply to institutions that employ 200 or more contractors in the aggregate. Currently, only Northwestern University meets that standard.
Evanston institutions such as the two local hospitals and two school districts provide services directly and don’t meet the 200-employee threshold locally, staff said at the city’s Feb. 5 Human Services Committee meeting.
A business such as Starbucks, where locally employees have raised job actions in some cases, for instance, does not meet the aggregate, they said.
Proposal details
Under the proposed ordinance, the successor contractor must pay workers at least the same wages and fringe benefits during the 90-day period they received from the previous contractor.
At the end of the transition period, the new contractor must offer continued employment to those workers whose performance during the 90-day period was satisfactory, explained Liza Roberson-Young, the city’s chief legislative policy adviser, in a memo.
The successor contractor may still fire a worker for cause during the 90 days, Roberson-Young pointed out, “and may also retain only some of the contractor’s workers based on classification and seniority if it does not need as many employees to perform the awarded contract.”
Fines for violation of the ordinance would run between $300 and $500 with $50 for each subsequent offense.
The proposal would be the first of its kind by a government unit in Illinois, Roberson-Young reported previously. 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.
UNITE HERE Local 1, the union which represents roughly 500 hospitality and food service workers who are employed by the Compass Group at Northwestern’s campus, has played a lead role in seeking the change.
The workers on the university’s campus are largely people of color and immigrants, the union reported, 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, the union reported.
’Stressful time’
When the university replaced food service operators Sodexo and Aramark with Compass Group in 2018, a number of workers expressed concern whether they would be able to keep their jobs, several members said, at the Human Services Committee meeting as well as during the public comment portion of Monday’s council meeting.
Kitanya Robertson, a Fifth Ward resident who has worked at Northwestern for eight years with the Compass group’s Starbucks service, told council members, “In 2018 when Compass took over, it was a stressful time for me and my co-workers,” she said. “We were told that we could possibly lose our jobs. I would have to start anew as a fresh hire. We were scared that even if you were rehired, the pick will go down to minimum wage. It was a roller coaster of emotions for all of us.”
Rosa Villaseñor, also an Evanston resident, said she experienced similar emotions. She has worked at the university’s Allen Center.
“I’m proud to be part of the Northwestern community and to serve the students, professors, staff and visitors to our campus,” she said. “I’m very good at my job and I make sure everyone feels welcome as if they’re coming to my own home. I pour my heart and soul into my work.”
With the Allen Center recently closed, she told council members, “I’m facing the same uncertainties I did in 2018, and still have a child in college and I need to pay for their studies.”
Northwestern officials didn’t respond to the proposed ordinance change when asked their view after the Feb. 5 city Human Services Committee meeting where the issue was first discussed. An e-mail was also sent to the Compass group this morning, seeking the company’s view of the proposed change.
Ordinance to protect contract workers at Northwestern moves forward to final vote is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.