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Feet to the Fire: The University and Kalmanovitz Institute Celebrate Ten Years of Just Employment

November 7, 2015


Feet to the Fire: The University and Kalmanovitz Institute Celebrate Ten Years of Just Employment

Elizabeth Teitz
The Kalmanovitz Institute commemorate ten years of Just Employment. PHOTO: Elizabeth Teitz

“Don’t die in Red Square.”

That’s what Father Raymond Kemp remembers telling student Zack Pesavento (SFS ’08) in March 2005. Pesavento was one of 26 students and members of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee (GSC) who took part in a nine-day hunger strike, protesting what they saw as unjust employment practices by the university towards campus-wide employees, including janitorial and facilities staff. These included paying contracted employees less than a living wage and intimidating workers who tried to organize and form a union.

The strike culminated on March 24, when University President John DeGioia announced the Just Employment Policy, which promises a living wage and broader protection of workers’ rights and resources. On Thursday, Oct. 5, 2015, the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor celebrated the anniversary of the policy, at Ten Years of Just Employment at Georgetown University, an event hosted in Riggs Library.

The policy includes four key provisions: a living and just wage (which is currently set at $16.45 per hour, calculated to include cost of living in the District of Columbia), an harassment-free work environment, the right to organize and form unions, and access to university resources, such as the library, transportation shuttles, and English language classes. Panelists at Thursday’s event included former and current student activists, administrators, and campus workers, who spoke about the past, present, and future of the policy.

“It’s a really important occasion for the university because the Just Employment Policy is one of the things that makes Georgetown distinctive,” said Joseph McCartin, a history professor and the Initiative’s executive director. “There are institutions that pledge to offer a living wage, there are institutions that have respected their workers’ rights to organize, but I don’t know of any university whose policy goes quite as far as ours.”

Students strike for the Just Employment Policy in 2005. This image is taken from a documentary about the campaign for the JEP made by the Georgetown Solidarity Committee.

In the Impact on the Campus Community panel, Donte Crestwell, a warehouse receiver at Leo’s who was a leader in the workers’ move to unionize in 2005, said that the atmosphere surrounding employment justice on campus has changed in the last decade.

“People were scared. You couldn’t use the word union without being talked to [by a supervisor],” he said. “We were working underground for whole year.” He recalled going door-to-door at employees’ homes to explain and gain support for unionization.

Since then, workers and administrators agree much has changed for workers by protecting their rights in negotiations and contracts, in addition to the increase in hourly wage, which included contracted workers such as janitors and Aramark employees. The policy also laid the groundwork for resolution of future university labor debates, such as the process of unionization by Aramark workers on campus in 2011, followed by the 2012 movement to unionize by adjunct professors.

In the case of Aramark workers, though they were able to unionize in 2011, disputes about their treatment under the policy have remained in question as recently as spring 2015, when workers petitioned the company for 40 paid hour work weeks, in order to ensure access to the living wage guaranteed, as well as more affordable health insurance and protection for immigrant workers, and improved working conditions. The university sent a letter to Aramark management in response, citing the company’s responsibilities under the policy.

In deciding the university’s stance on adjunct unionization, Provost Robert Groves, who had just begun at Georgetown, recalled that the answer was simple.

“It became clear that the principles underlying a decision [on the university’s position]were indeed in place through the Just Employment Policy,” he said. “At that time, I had not even read the Just Employment Policy, but to my deep admiration for the institution I had just joined, this was a simple decision for Jack [DeGioia], Erik [Smulson, Vice President for Public Affairs], and all the other leaders.”

The policy also aims to align employment practices with the university’s Jesuit and Catholic identity, living out the mission of being men and women for others and pulling from Catholic social thought.

“God lives in the janitor’s closet,” said Father Kemp, quoting a student he’d spoken with recently who had participated in the hunger strike ten years ago. “[The policy] puts into real play our teaching and values. If you can’t deal with the issues here, how in God’s name can you deal with it in the market?”

McCartin agreed, and explained that the policy’s development drew from historic Catholic principles and papal encyclicals.

“Catholic social teaching, since the 1890s, has emphasized certain basic things related to workers’ relationships to the economy, that the economy is there to serve people and not the reverse, and that workers have certain rights and expectations from their work,” he said. “One is that, when one is working full time, one ought to be able to derive a living wage for the work one does.”

Working conditions and workers’ treatment have changed during the policy’s lifetime, but speakers called the policy a living document. They explained constant work is required to maintain and expand on the policy’s goals. 

“It’s an ongoing struggle,” said Virginia Leavell (COL ‘05), who was a member of GSC and a hunger striker during the Living Wage Campaign. “I’m excited to have workers and students here who are … holding the university’s feet to the fire, because that’s what it takes, and that’s what it took to get here.”

She recalled the events of that spring as a culmination of years of work by employees who put themselves and their jobs at risk to organize, and added that work remains to be done. “You win a victory, but it’s another whole campaign to pull that up – you never really just win, you have to put the pressure on.”

“Georgetown can do more than a living wage, it can be a place that works on income inequality,” said panelist Dr. Kerry Danner-McDonald, an adjunct professor in the Theology Department. She cited part-time adjunct professors, who have semester-by-semester contracts, as an additional group on campus facing issues of unfair employment policies.

“It’s a living thing, we’re living it out and living into it as we carry it out,” McCartin said. “As we live this document going forward, be a part of it.”

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Elizabeth Teitz
Liz Teitz is a former News Editor of The Georgetown Voice. She graduated from the college in 2016.


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