HFS Workers Protest Hiring Contractors
6-11-2024
By: The Nightly Crew
On May 29th, UW custodians gathered at HFS headquarters to demand a living wage and protest the hiring of contractors. The latter is a consequence of the former: when you pay your employees poverty wages, people aren’t all that tempted to work for you, which leads to a chronic understaffing problem. The solution? Patch up those gaping holes with contract workers. This was explained to me by a food service worker who was there to drop off a petition against contracting, signed by everyone at their dining hall. Because I didn’t know how contracting worked until Wednesday, I asked, “So they don’t have to pay the contractors as much?”
“No, actually. The way contracting works is, say, we make $22 an hour, right? Contractors make, like, $21 an hour, so about the same, but when you hire a contractor you pay both the employee and you pay another $21 for the contracting company. It’s just an incredibly expensive way to do things.”
“So instead of paying people more so they’ll get more employees, they’re paying more so they can get contractors?”
“Yeah.”
“Why the fuck would they do that?”
“Because contractors don’t have workers’ rights. If they don’t like ‘em, they can show ‘em the door. A lot of them last a day or two and then either walk out on their own or get fired.”
HFS isn’t willing to pay for their employees to lead stable, comfortable lives, but apparently there’s one thing they are willing to pay for: not having to do that. Maybe it’s pure evil. Maybe they’re predicting that in the long run, paying twice as much will save them money, since raising wages is hard to reverse. Maybe it’s Maybelline. What it isn’t is out of character for HFS, which has been deflecting demands for living wages and safe working conditions for years. Today, the rep from the HFS side came out of the building, talked to people for about a minute, then went back in without giving anyone anything concrete. Somebody called, “So you’re not gonna listen to what people have to say?”, and she didn’t turn around. She was right in the doorway, but she pretended she didn’t hear. This is how HFS (and UW as a whole) ‘negotiates:’ they ignore, try to wait it out, and hope people get tired enough to give up.
A member of the bargaining team– who informed me he had cleaned many Nightly fliers off buildings, but was admirably chill about it– explained that this is how you get a whole crew sharing two pairs of boots when a bathroom floods, and sleeping three to a room. HFS workers aren’t provided with adequate PPE, and custodians aren’t given stipends to buy their own. After years of being denied basic workers’ rights with the excuse of not having the budget, HFS hiring contractors at twice the rate just to avoid having to observe those rights is an incredible insult. As an extra slap in the face, Wednesday happened to be the same day as the Aerotek job fair. There were signs up all around for it, and it seemed to be taking up most of HFS’s attention, which is fittingly brutal because Aerotek is the contracting company they’re using to replace their employees. Everyone in attendance was there on their lunch break.
The UW’s shitty treatment of their employees also plays into the conversation around escalations for Palestine. How do you take action, knowing that no institution will ever change its policy unless not doing so becomes majorly inconvenient, while also recognizing that the brunt of those inconveniences will fall on already understaffed, underpaid employees? Anytime you try to fight institutionalized violence, institutions will heighten that violence and then say, “Look what Antifa did! They’re hurting the people they claim to be advocating for!” (They always paint the ‘advocates’ and the ‘advocated for’ as two separate groups, as if people are incapable of advocating for themselves.) But labor exploitation doesn’t start with outside circumstances; it starts with institutions who don’t give a shit about anything but profit. To sit back and stop trying to change the way these institutions run-- whether that’s taking money from war profiteers or paying their employees an unlivable wage-- doesn’t protect anyone but the people at the top. Labor solidarity and anti-colonialism are a package deal. UW couldn’t function without HFS workers, library workers, grad students, or any of the other employees who carry out its essential functions. Though the specifics of these groups’ struggles may vary, they collectively hold enormous power to pressure the university from the foundation up, which is exactly what’s needed if we want to see institutional change.
