Over a month after Aramark finally settled its union agreement with its Hopkins workers, employees continue to express frustration with what they consider unfair business practices by the company, which began working with Hopkins in 2006.
Perhaps the least fair rule, according to a number of long-time Aramark employees, concerns vacations.
Each summer, the majority of workers go on "lay off"; they are removed from the company's payroll, with a stipulation that they will be rehired at the start of the fall term. Most of them file for unemployment wages during that time. Several employees noted that the summer is too short to find employment elsewhere. Aramark's predecessor, Sodexho, allowed its employees to take their vacations during the school year, up to a week at a time, depending on seniority. According to several long standing employees, Aramark is insisting that they take no more than two days off at any time.
"We submit our vacation slips early, and they get denied," said a long-time worker at the Charles Street Market. For employees who have been working at Hopkins for well over a decade and are allotted several weeks of vacation each year, this renders their vacation time useless.
"That's just not vacation. If I'm going on vacation, I want my whole week off," said one long-time employee, who chose to remain anonymous.
Several Aramark workers have said that the company asked them to conserve their vacation time until the summer, when they would usually be laid off and receive unemployment anyway. Instead, they would keep their jobs until their vacation time was spent, and then be laid off, as these workers understood it. Essentially, "we don't vacation -- or at least not real vacation, during the school year," one of the workers said.
The vacation policy spills over into many of the employees' conveniences over the summer.
"We file for unemployment every summer to tie us over until you [the students] come back to school. We can't get unemployment if we use vacation time. A lay-off is not a vacation," a worker at Charles Street market said. Aramark expressed total satisfaction with the union agreement last month, but would not comment to the News-Letter regarding any contract specifics. "It is our policy not to provide specific information regarding employment terms and union contracts," said Julie Scharle, a public relations manage for Aramark.
"They tell us, `They have to run a business'," a worker at Nolan's on 33rd said when asked if he was given any reason for these new rules. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement that works for everyone, and we will continue to focus on delivering excellent service to the Johns Hopkins University community," Scharle said last month.
However, according to a dining employee at the Market, "Aramark is terrible. They don't pay attention to the contract.
"David Furhman, the director of Dining Programs at Hopkins, would not comment because he has no jurisdiction over Aramark employees.
Another apparent infringement on last month's agreement, according to several Aramark workers at the Charles Street Market, is the absence of expected raises.
"Aramark hasn't even given us our expected raise. We are supposed to get a 20-cent raise now and another 20-cent raise in August once the contract is over. We are supposed to get retro where 20 cents is added every week we don't get the raise," said the worker, who was employed by Sodexho for well over a decade before being re-hired by Aramark.
In the end, Aramark has left many employees less pleased than they were under Sodexho.
"We didn't have any problems with raises or vacation days with Sodexho," the same worker said.
At the end of last year, the union workers were negotiating a new contract with Sodexho for the 2006-2007. The switch to Aramark has "upset" their negotiations, leaving many disgruntled because of their treatment.
Rosten did not offer any interpretation of the employees' complaints.
