SDS-SFA Meet With Corporate ARAMARK Representatives

Tuesday, Feb. 16 -At 2pm, a six member delegation of SDS-Student/Farmworker Alliance(SFA) met with two ARAMARK corporate executives and two local operation managers: Robert Dennill (Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility), Rick Martella (C.V.P of Corporate Affairs), Bill Zemba ( Resident district manager), and Terry Stevens (Vice President of Florida Higher Education Sales), respectively. The meeting went as expected-nothing productive was accomplished and the truth was obfuscated. The officials tried to pacify the delegation though rhetoric with claims of "working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)."

However, we are in direct contact with the folks in Immokalee and we know that nothing meaningful has come out of these meetings between the CIW and ARAMARK and that ARAMARK is just stalling. We learned what pacification sounds like coming from eloquent corporate lips but in the end we always stand with the workers over the bossman. In solidarity with the CIW, we promised to escalate the campaign, along with national SFA, until the three demands of the CIW are met:

1) A Penny per Pound increase in pay for tomato pickers

2) An enforceable code of conduct in the fields

3) Workers having a seat at the table

All we offered to these suits was our promise to fight against the racist exploitation of farmworkers and we made it clear that we won't be satisfied until there is justice for farmworkers.

-El Flaco, J-Miah y El Beto

SDS and SFA protest Aramark, escalate immediately.

Today (2/10/10) members of SDS/SFA were scheduled to meet with an Aramark representative regarding the demands of the CIW but it was canceled at the last minute. Aramark decided to jerk around the CIW last week so the campaign against them is escalating nationally. Seeing how they were doing the samething to us we decided to escalate our tactics immediately by turning a cancelled meeting into a rally and protest in the Reitz Union!

Around 35 people showed up to confront Aramark about cancelling the meeting. We decided to keep our end the deal and hold the meeting at Terry Stevens office. His secretary accepted our letter on his behalf after we read to the staff a list of our demands. We then told them that if they did not meet them, we would act accordingly. We did so immediately by walking up the stairs and chanting "No more slaves! Pay a living wage!" We got the attention of all the students eating lunch in the Reitz Union, and told them who we are and how Aramark refused to meet the demands of the CIW. We then walked around the Reitz Union chanting. Employees of the Reitz Union tried to stop several of us but, knowing our rights, we ignored them and continued our protest.

Several students joined us in chanting and the march around the Reitz union. Several more came up to us to learn more about our cause and we invited them to come to our meetings. The Alligator and the Gainesville Sun were also there, so expect some more updates tomorrow with links to their stories.