for Donald Gordon Centre and University Club employees
January 27, 2025
Good Morning,
We need to update you on our day of bargaining with Aramark this past Thursday, January 23rd. It was a long 12-hour day: we met many times with the employer, trading proposals.
We will meet again on Wednesday, January 29th, and will face a tough decision: do we accept what Aramark is offering, or get ready to strike to fight for more? We need to hear from you. We think you deserve better.
We have made progress on many proposals, making agreements on many proposals made by both the union and the employer. We have made some gains on our health benefit plan (though not as much as we deserve), our employer-matched RRSPs, paid sick days for part-time employees, and scheduling and seniority issues with our new University Club members.
We are now down to just two key issues where the two sides are very far apart: 1) wages and 2) staffing.
Staffing: we shared with Aramark your concerns about being understaffed. Too often, members are left covering the work of two people when someone is absent or simply when management decides not to schedule enough people. Aramark continues to refuse the union’s proposal to commit to a higher minimum number of staffed shifts. In their words: “We do not have a problem with understaffing. We will not give up our management right to schedule based on our operational needs.”
Does that sound right to you? Are you willing to keep working at current levels of staffing?!
Wages: We told you in November that we shared with Aramark the results from the bargaining survey which showed how many of our members have struggled to pay monthly bills (over half of us) and how many have to work extra jobs (a quarter of us) or suffer from poor health because of our low wages (again, a quarter of us).
Last week, we informed Aramark management that the City of Kingston has declared a Food Insecurity Crisis. That’s because 1 in 3 households in Kingston can not buy enough food. We even told them our personal stories as bargaining committee members: that all of us have other jobs or have to live with relatives because we can’t live just on our income as full-time employees of the Donald Gordon Centre.
Management’s response was to tell us that we are the highest-paid hotel workers in the Kingston area, and that because we got such a good raise in the last round of bargaining, we should be satisfied with what we have.
Do you think that’s OK?! That, just because we shamed them into paying us the same wages as other Aramark employees at Queen’s University last round, that we don’t deserve a living wage?!
Aramark is offering us a 3% wage increase (and not even all of us: just those at the three-year rate!). That would be $0.66/hour. Does that feel like enough to you?!
Your voice matters. If Aramark sees that all of us are willing to fight for better wages and more staff by possibly withdrawing our labour next week, they will be more likely to offer something fair.
Tell Aramark you deserve more!
Contact one of us to apply to receive strike pay if we can’t reach a deal before February 3. And we need a few more picket captains to help organize if we end up on strike! Training for picket captains is Monday and Tuesday. Register for one of the sessions below and tell Megan you are doing so.
Jan 27, 12-3pm Jeffrey Hall room 115, 48 University Ave – Register
Jan 27, 6-9pm, Jeffrey Hall room 115, 48 University Ave – Register
Jan 28, 6pm, Zoom – Register
In solidarity,
Your Bargaining Committee
Joe, Megan, and Michael