STATE OF THE UNION

Rollins College dining workers formally file for a union election, after keeping their campaign under wraps for months

BY MCKENNA SCHUELER

Food service and dining workers at Rollins College have officially filed to unionize with the labor union Unite Here, after quietly launching an organizing campaign last August.

At least 75 workers would be represented by the union, according to a petition filed with the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections in the private sector.

The hospitality union, Unite Here Local 362, would cover all full-time and regular part-time food service workers, as well as cooks, cashiers and dishwashers at the private Winter Park college. Supervisors, guards, and management would be excluded.

Eric Clinton, president of Unite Here Local 362, told Orlando Weekly that workers are “really excited” for this next step in the process.

It’s the latest update in a first-of-its-kind organizing campaign at Rollins College, a private liberal arts college in Winter Park that currently has no union, not even for its faculty.

But this isn’t unexpected.

Dining workers employed by food service company Sodexo initially kept their unionization campaign under wraps for months. But earlier this year, after witnessing an escalation of alleged intimidation tactics from their employer that eventually got Winter Park police involved, they first told Orlando Weekly of their intent to unionize.

Four students from the University of Central Florida, allied with the pro-union workers, were cited with trespass warnings by Winter Park police in February while leafleting in support of the union on the private campus.

Sodexo management allegedly notified security of their presence. And the cops were called to kick them out, according to records Orlando Weekly obtained from Winter Park police.

Sodexo has a long history of union-busting, but it hasn’t deterred the workers’ unionization effort, which workers have said is driven by a desire to address wages that are insufficient to keep up with Central Florida’s cost of living, paltry job benefits, and inconsistent work schedules.

Multiple workers previously told Orlando Weekly that most of their colleagues in food service at the college — many of whom are people of color — make just around $15 per hour. Clinton said some of the workers make just $13 or $14 per hour.

That isn’t enough to make ends meet in Central Florida broadly, let alone anywhere near the college’s location in Winter

Park, where the median household income is $88,688.

Rollins College itself is an expensive institution; the cheapest meal plan for students who live on-campus is $2,615 per semester.

Wages for longtime workers have largely remained stagnant. In some cases more experienced workers make less than the new hires they are training, according to several workers Orlando Weekly spoke to who’d been hired within the last year.

Filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to request a union election is one of two paths towards securing formal union recognition.

The other path, generally pursued first, involves getting voluntary recognition from an employer after gathering documentation from a majority of workers that demonstrates their support for unionization.

According to Clinton, the union president, Sodexo refused to voluntarily recognize the union campaign.

If the employer refuses to voluntarily recognize the union, workers can petition the NLRB for a union election, provided they have signed cards of support from at least 30% of employees eligible.

Clinton said they have a “majority” of workers in favor of unionization, with over 50% support.

Sodexo, a multinational company that’s reported a rise in revenues post-COVID closures, previously told Orlando Weekly in a statement that they respect the rights of their employees to unionize or not to unionize, adding that they have “hundreds” of union contracts with labor unions across the United States.

For instance, Sodexo employees at Disney World and the Orange County Convention Center are unionized, as are food service workers throughout the country at various university cafeterias, schools, and employee dining spaces for private companies, like Google.

A spokesperson for Rollins College previously stated the college “supports [Sodexo] employees’ right to discuss unionization.”

Students and faculty at the college have rallied in support of workers’ union efforts, and faculty of the College of Liberal Arts have passed a resolution stating that they “support the campus dining service workers employed by Sodexo in their effort to seek a fair process to decide whether to form a union.” mschueler@orlandoweekly.com

The Florida House could be poised to take up a bill that seeks to prevent transgender men and women from using bathrooms that don’t line up with their sex assigned at birth, after one Republican said Monday it’s “like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth.”

“We have people that live among us today on planet Earth that are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet,” Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona, said before the House Commerce Committee approved the bill. “This is the planet Earth where God created men male and women female. I’m a proud Christian conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence, not on the fence.”

Barnaby’s comments came after transgender people testified against the bill. He called them “demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world. So, I’m saying my righteous indignation is stirred. I am sick and tired of this. I’m not going to put up with it. You can test me and try to take me on. But I promise you I’ll win every time.”

Rep. Kristen Arrington, D-Kissimmee, followed Barnaby and was clearly taken aback by his comments. She addressed the transgender people who spoke, pointing to their “bravery.”

“Also to tell that I see you, hear you, understand and love you,” Arrington said. “Definitely, I’m still a little bit thrown off from the last comments here and just really want to let you all know that there are many here that understand and support you.”

Rep. Chase Tramont, a Port Orange Republican who supported the bill, appeared to try to distance himself from Barnaby’s comments.

“I’m also a Christian man, and I just want to say to some of the folks in here who shared their testimony, I appreciated you coming up. You’re not an evil being. I believe that you’re fearfully and wonderfully made,” Tramont said. “And I want you to live your life as well. There’s no easy way to go about addressing legislation. There’s no easy way to make everybody happy on all sides. There just isn’t.”

Later, Barnaby apologized for describing transgender people as “demons.”

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