Cafeteria workers remain district employees despite Chartwells contract

The two dozen full- and part-time employees who work in the cafeterias and kitchens in schools throughout the Somerset kindergarten-to-Grade-8 School and Somerset Berkley Regional school districts will remain district and regional district employees — rather than have their positions outsourced to new food service provider Chartwells, which had been awarded the school lunch contracts in both school districts for the upcoming year.

The two districts had recently come to agreements with their unionized cafeteria workers, who are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 93, Local 1701, the union that represents most municipal employees — with the exceptions of police and fire personnel and teachers.

And they did so at a cost, according to AFSCME, Council 93, Local 1701 President Steve Mello. Mello said the employees, whose positions are bakers and cooks, gave up a lot.

“They gave up 15 percent,” he said. “They gave up holidays, vacation time, sick time. They gave up longevity pay.”

The memorandum of agreement signed on June 25, 2015, covers a one-year period, from Sept. 1, 2015 to Aug. 31, 2016. According to its terms, vacation time has been reduced by half for both full-time and part-time employees. Holiday pay for George Washington’s Birthday and Patriot’s Day had also been eliminated. The contract also stipulates that new employees hired on or after Sept. 1, 2015 may earn up to 10 sick days a year, and accrue no more than 20 sick days at any given time. Employees hired prior to Sept. 1, 2015 “will not accrue any additional sick time but will be able to use their existing accrued sick days,” the contract reads. The contract also included a new longevity stipend schedule.

The MOA also cuts non-union employees’ hourly rates by 15 percent from their hourly rates during the 2014-15 school year.

Arastou Mahjoory, who chairs the Somerset K-8 School Committee said retaining those workers district employees had been a goal during negotiations, as had been keeping the costs of the school lunch program under control — “to break even, instead of running a deficit,”

Mahjoory said. “It can’t be a program where we’re losing $70- to 80,000 a year.”

The school lunch programs in both districts had been running deficits in recent years. Whitson Culinary Group had been the districts’ school lunch provider this past year.