New Haven Independent

Ongoing cost-cutting efforts to remedy this were highlighted at Monday’s Board of Education meeting when these women and about a dozen others presented a petition to the board protesting the elimination of two cook positions, one at the John S. Martinez (K-8) School and one at the Sheridan Academy for Excellence middle school. Monica Nachemja-Bunton (second from left in the photo at the top), an organizer with Local 217 of Unite Here, the union representing the approximately 180 cafeteria workers in the New Haven Public School system, was joined by Grace Daniele (to her right), the union’s shop steward, in protesting the elimination of the cook positions, which took place at the end of March.

“They took a cook out of each cafeteria,” said Nachemja-Butnon, “and moved the production to the central kitchen. That leaves four general cafeteria workers, and no leader for the crew. And certainly no reduction in the number of kids who must be served. This is not only bad for the workers, it’s bad policy, because the cook is in charge.”

Depending on the size of the school, there can be anywhere from one to six staffers in a NHPS cafeteria. Typically a cafeteria team is led by one cook with the others being termed “general workers.” The team in turn reports to or is supervised by a food services manager who works for Aramark.

Bunton said that there was widespread disapproval of the move to eliminate the two cooks; the petitions that she and her colleagues presented had hundreds of signatures from students, parents, teachers, and even principals. The text of the petition reads, “The cafeteria workers in the New Haven School System work hard every day to provide healthy meals and friendly service to the students and faculty of New Haven. Aramark has decided to take away two cook positions in the system. This will result in poor food quality and rushed service for the students; and also reduce the promotional opportunities for the cafeteria workers and result in a deskilling of the workforce.”

Robin Golden, chief executive officer for the NHPS, said that the two cooks were not fired, but that the positions were eliminated through attrition — that is, when the two individuals retired. “We built the central kitchen,” she added, “at considerable expense. It’s taking a while until we can integrate it fully into the system, and it’s important to do that so that we will continue to make things more cost effective.”

Chris Avtges (pictured with Golden), who is in his second year as general manager for Aramark’s food services in NHPS, said that approximately 30 of the 50 or so schools in the system currently receive some or all of their food from the central kitchen. “And there are a good number of cafeteria teams that are functioning well without a cook,” he added. “They simply work with the food services manager to deploy one staffer to heat the food, another to take care of clicking the kids in, the documentation, and so forth. The staff reductions do not lead to ‘leadership’ problems,” he said.

Was the goal, ultimately, to eliminate all cooks from the school cafeterias and have all the food production centralized? “No,” answered Golden. “In a large high school, for example, with a big student population, efficiency would warrant maintaining cooks there.”

There are currently 48 cafeterias distributed throughout the NHPS system. Some 16,000 lunches and 9,000 breakfasts are prepared daily system-wide, according to the NHPS web site. “And the jobs,” according to Golden and Avtges, are pretty good ones. “For the ten-month annual contract, the jobs pay between $15 and $17 an hour, with full benefits available for those who work a minimum of 20 hours a week,” Golden said.

The petition that Nachemja-Bunton filed was in a support of a grievance, already formally filed by the union with the board. It is a several-step grievance procedure, with a decision on step two to come down soon.