The card was an enlargement of a card that was signed by a majority of Sodexho Food Service workers.
“I already work at the University, now it’s time I work for the University.”
“By signing below, I affirm that I support University employment with AFSCME Local 3299 membership for myself and my co-workers because it’s better for all of us, our families, students, and our community.”
The cards were signed over the past few months and this week, they were signed by over a majority of the workers.
The chancellor was not available. However, Executive Vice Chancellor Bob Loessberg-Zahl met with the delegation of six Sodexho workers, most of whom Spanish was their first language.
He patiently and politely listened for nearly 20 minutes to each of the workers relay their concerns and experiences. He took extensive notes and promised to relay the information to the chancellor.
One of the stories that was told to the Mr. Loessberg-Zahl was the consequence for the lack of health benefits. The gentleman two people to the right of the President is a man named Joe Moreno. Mr. Moreno could not make it yesterday because he is in the hospital. He has a serious heart condition and is prescribed two heart medicines which are extremely expensive. Because he cannot afford insurance, he has only been able to take one of those heart medicines. Right now he has an enlarged heart. Because of its weakness they cannot shock him back into sinus rhythm, so he is laid up in the hospital and they are hoping at some point he will get strong enough so that they can shock him. An individual with health insurance would not be in his position today.
Directly to the right of the President is Esther Juarez, who was with the workers yesterday. You may recall her tale. As the result of an emergency procedure, I believe an appendectomy, and the fact that she did not have health insurance, she owes $45,000, a debt that she will likely never be able to repay.
The fight for affordable health insurance is literally a fight between life and death. These individuals work hard for low pay. Having affordable health insurance can mean that they can get preventative medicine, it means they will be more productive, and it means that a simple emergency will not put them into tremendous debt. In the case of Joe Moreno, it could mean the difference between life and death.
For me this is a struggle about the most basic of human rights and human dignity–the right to fair pay for a hard day’s work and affordable health insurance. We were standing in the office of those making hundreds of thousands of dollars and all I could think of is that the women I was standing next to could have easily been my mother-in-law, the grandmother of my future children. The woman who sacrificed so much so that her children could have a better life. So that her daughter, my wife, could go to college and not have to be worry about such indignities.
It seems like such a simple thing and it seems to easy to dismiss. Last night, all I could think about was Joe Moreno and how happy he was to have gotten to meet the President. However, proud they all were to be standing there that day. And to think that now he’s in the hospital fighting for his life, I really cannot put words to describe how I feel. For those of you who believe this is just about a union trying to get power by organizing a few hundred workers, think again. Think how you would feel if this was your loved one or even yourself.
—Doug Paul Davis reporting
DPD:
Thanks for keeping the community aware of the ongoing struggle of the Sodexho Workers with UC Davis to achieve basic benefits that should be afforded to all workers in America and especially at a land grant university.
You said it best: “For me this is a struggle about the most basic of human rights and human dignity–the right to fair pay for a hard day’s work and affordable health insurance.”
Keep up the good work.
DPD:
Thanks for keeping the community aware of the ongoing struggle of the Sodexho Workers with UC Davis to achieve basic benefits that should be afforded to all workers in America and especially at a land grant university.
You said it best: “For me this is a struggle about the most basic of human rights and human dignity–the right to fair pay for a hard day’s work and affordable health insurance.”
Keep up the good work.
DPD:
Thanks for keeping the community aware of the ongoing struggle of the Sodexho Workers with UC Davis to achieve basic benefits that should be afforded to all workers in America and especially at a land grant university.
You said it best: “For me this is a struggle about the most basic of human rights and human dignity–the right to fair pay for a hard day’s work and affordable health insurance.”
Keep up the good work.
DPD:
Thanks for keeping the community aware of the ongoing struggle of the Sodexho Workers with UC Davis to achieve basic benefits that should be afforded to all workers in America and especially at a land grant university.
You said it best: “For me this is a struggle about the most basic of human rights and human dignity–the right to fair pay for a hard day’s work and affordable health insurance.”
Keep up the good work.
As an alum I can say that it’s embarrassing that our alma mater people this way.
Wake up Larry — we don’t want our UC to be known as the school that doesn’t care about working class and poor people.
As an alum I can say that it’s embarrassing that our alma mater people this way.
Wake up Larry — we don’t want our UC to be known as the school that doesn’t care about working class and poor people.
As an alum I can say that it’s embarrassing that our alma mater people this way.
Wake up Larry — we don’t want our UC to be known as the school that doesn’t care about working class and poor people.
As an alum I can say that it’s embarrassing that our alma mater people this way.
Wake up Larry — we don’t want our UC to be known as the school that doesn’t care about working class and poor people.
I went to UC Santa Cruz. A few months after the issue of the mistreatment of Sodexho workers was brought up, the then Chancellor MRC Greenwood did the right thing and made the decision to hire all of the Sodexho workers. Sodexho workers at UCD, first brought up this issue with Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef 5 years ago, and he still hasn’t listened. How much longer will Sodexho workers have to continue to suffer in Davis?
I went to UC Santa Cruz. A few months after the issue of the mistreatment of Sodexho workers was brought up, the then Chancellor MRC Greenwood did the right thing and made the decision to hire all of the Sodexho workers. Sodexho workers at UCD, first brought up this issue with Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef 5 years ago, and he still hasn’t listened. How much longer will Sodexho workers have to continue to suffer in Davis?
I went to UC Santa Cruz. A few months after the issue of the mistreatment of Sodexho workers was brought up, the then Chancellor MRC Greenwood did the right thing and made the decision to hire all of the Sodexho workers. Sodexho workers at UCD, first brought up this issue with Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef 5 years ago, and he still hasn’t listened. How much longer will Sodexho workers have to continue to suffer in Davis?
I went to UC Santa Cruz. A few months after the issue of the mistreatment of Sodexho workers was brought up, the then Chancellor MRC Greenwood did the right thing and made the decision to hire all of the Sodexho workers. Sodexho workers at UCD, first brought up this issue with Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef 5 years ago, and he still hasn’t listened. How much longer will Sodexho workers have to continue to suffer in Davis?
For those who have any sense of the history here…let me remond you that this is chickens coming home to roost.
I graduated from UCD nearly 20 years ago. As an undergraduate I worked at the Coffee House, when it was really an alternative place to eat. Much of the ‘upgrades’ to the UCD campus were masterminded while I was a student there, under Chancellor Ted Hullar, who only stuck around Davis long enough to do irrepreable damage.
The “Hullarification” included making UCD more corporate, more mainstream, more biotech, less agricultural, and, of all things, to get UCD a football stadium. The great controversies at the time were the burrowing owls along LaRue Road, the potential razing of the Domes, or the Experiemental Farm, the replacement of the Aggie Mustang from the big water tower by I-80 with a more ‘collegiate’ logo developed by a high-class consultant in the financial district of San Francisco. This was all symbolic of Ted Hullar’s agenda to diminish UCD’s agricultural associations. After this followed the disemboweling and dismemberment of the college of agriculture, and it’s replacement with big-biotech-beholden departments and funding schemes.
Oh, and what this has to do with the Coffee House? When they orchestrated the great MU remodel, and the real coffee house moved location, and the heart and soul of the coffee house was forever lost (dispatched Doug, the brilliant cook and thinker and artist and poet who had lead and inspired the CH’s food policies and menu for 20 years), they also signed a contract with Marriott to allow them ALL the other food service contracts on campus. So, the ‘deal’ was that we’d get a bigger better coffee house, but ASUCD would be forever forbidden to run any other food service beyond the newer fancy location.
Such a deal.
For those who have any sense of the history here…let me remond you that this is chickens coming home to roost.
I graduated from UCD nearly 20 years ago. As an undergraduate I worked at the Coffee House, when it was really an alternative place to eat. Much of the ‘upgrades’ to the UCD campus were masterminded while I was a student there, under Chancellor Ted Hullar, who only stuck around Davis long enough to do irrepreable damage.
The “Hullarification” included making UCD more corporate, more mainstream, more biotech, less agricultural, and, of all things, to get UCD a football stadium. The great controversies at the time were the burrowing owls along LaRue Road, the potential razing of the Domes, or the Experiemental Farm, the replacement of the Aggie Mustang from the big water tower by I-80 with a more ‘collegiate’ logo developed by a high-class consultant in the financial district of San Francisco. This was all symbolic of Ted Hullar’s agenda to diminish UCD’s agricultural associations. After this followed the disemboweling and dismemberment of the college of agriculture, and it’s replacement with big-biotech-beholden departments and funding schemes.
Oh, and what this has to do with the Coffee House? When they orchestrated the great MU remodel, and the real coffee house moved location, and the heart and soul of the coffee house was forever lost (dispatched Doug, the brilliant cook and thinker and artist and poet who had lead and inspired the CH’s food policies and menu for 20 years), they also signed a contract with Marriott to allow them ALL the other food service contracts on campus. So, the ‘deal’ was that we’d get a bigger better coffee house, but ASUCD would be forever forbidden to run any other food service beyond the newer fancy location.
Such a deal.
For those who have any sense of the history here…let me remond you that this is chickens coming home to roost.
I graduated from UCD nearly 20 years ago. As an undergraduate I worked at the Coffee House, when it was really an alternative place to eat. Much of the ‘upgrades’ to the UCD campus were masterminded while I was a student there, under Chancellor Ted Hullar, who only stuck around Davis long enough to do irrepreable damage.
The “Hullarification” included making UCD more corporate, more mainstream, more biotech, less agricultural, and, of all things, to get UCD a football stadium. The great controversies at the time were the burrowing owls along LaRue Road, the potential razing of the Domes, or the Experiemental Farm, the replacement of the Aggie Mustang from the big water tower by I-80 with a more ‘collegiate’ logo developed by a high-class consultant in the financial district of San Francisco. This was all symbolic of Ted Hullar’s agenda to diminish UCD’s agricultural associations. After this followed the disemboweling and dismemberment of the college of agriculture, and it’s replacement with big-biotech-beholden departments and funding schemes.
Oh, and what this has to do with the Coffee House? When they orchestrated the great MU remodel, and the real coffee house moved location, and the heart and soul of the coffee house was forever lost (dispatched Doug, the brilliant cook and thinker and artist and poet who had lead and inspired the CH’s food policies and menu for 20 years), they also signed a contract with Marriott to allow them ALL the other food service contracts on campus. So, the ‘deal’ was that we’d get a bigger better coffee house, but ASUCD would be forever forbidden to run any other food service beyond the newer fancy location.
Such a deal.
For those who have any sense of the history here…let me remond you that this is chickens coming home to roost.
I graduated from UCD nearly 20 years ago. As an undergraduate I worked at the Coffee House, when it was really an alternative place to eat. Much of the ‘upgrades’ to the UCD campus were masterminded while I was a student there, under Chancellor Ted Hullar, who only stuck around Davis long enough to do irrepreable damage.
The “Hullarification” included making UCD more corporate, more mainstream, more biotech, less agricultural, and, of all things, to get UCD a football stadium. The great controversies at the time were the burrowing owls along LaRue Road, the potential razing of the Domes, or the Experiemental Farm, the replacement of the Aggie Mustang from the big water tower by I-80 with a more ‘collegiate’ logo developed by a high-class consultant in the financial district of San Francisco. This was all symbolic of Ted Hullar’s agenda to diminish UCD’s agricultural associations. After this followed the disemboweling and dismemberment of the college of agriculture, and it’s replacement with big-biotech-beholden departments and funding schemes.
Oh, and what this has to do with the Coffee House? When they orchestrated the great MU remodel, and the real coffee house moved location, and the heart and soul of the coffee house was forever lost (dispatched Doug, the brilliant cook and thinker and artist and poet who had lead and inspired the CH’s food policies and menu for 20 years), they also signed a contract with Marriott to allow them ALL the other food service contracts on campus. So, the ‘deal’ was that we’d get a bigger better coffee house, but ASUCD would be forever forbidden to run any other food service beyond the newer fancy location.
Such a deal.