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BY JONATHAN EMONT

In print | Published November 13, 2008 — Updated December 05, 2008 09:49

As the Swarthmore administration continues to deliberate plans for a future Swarthmore Inn, student activists are mobilizing to make sure that in case the inn becomes a reality, inn employees will have the opportunity to unionize. The new Swarthmore Labor Action Project has initiated discussions with the administration to ensure that a neutrality agreement will be a component of inn policy. A neutrality agreement is a legal document that would obligate the inn developer to work with and recognize an inn worker union.

In order to drum up support on campus for the neutrality agreement, SLAP, in coordination with Class Awareness Month, hosted a hotel workers panel in Bond Hall on Monday night. This event was the first one planned by SLAP to address the issue.

The event began with an introduction by SLAP member Alexa Malishchak ’09. She said SLAP convened the panel because “we wanted to talk about what work in the hotel industry can be like.” While waiting for the two panelists, who were delayed, Malishchak discussed the likelihood of the proposed hotel being built and what she called the “necessity” that the hotel workers are given the right to unionize. “Organizing workers,” she said, “can be a very effective mechanism for ensuring workers’ rights.”

SLAP organizers intended for the panel to contrast the working conditions of unionized hotel workers with their non-unionized counterparts. The first hotel worker to arrive was a woman operating under the pseudonym Maria. The organizers were worried that if her employers became aware that Maria was campaigning for workers’ rights, she would face harassment from them. Maria spoke for over fifteen minutes about the struggles she faced on the job, the intimidation and arbitrary treatment she was subjected to and the ways her employers managed to quash attempts by workers to organize a union.

Speaking with the aid of a translator, Maria gave a short narrative about her daily life at the hotel. She then responded to questions posed by Malishchak, and a few minutes later, by members of the audience. When asked why the workers weren’t able to start up a union, she said, “Workers listen to everything you say about unions, then take it back to management because they know that’s how they can get a raise.”

As Maria was finishing speaking, Lebe, a Togo native and labor organizer, joined the panel. Lebe discussed her attempts to secure a job as an immigrant in the United States and described her work as a unionized worker at the Hampton Inn. While she was careful to make clear how much she felt unions protected workers, contrasting her unionized job at the Hampton Inn favorably with her earlier, non-unionized one at Popeyes, Lebe focused primarily on describing the management’s attempts to derail the Hampton Inn workers’ union. “Even with the union contract they can still get you,” Lebe said. “One day I was off from work they hired these six West Africans who they convinced to sign pieces of paper saying they didn’t want a union.” Lebe confronted her employer and ultimately left the Hampton Inn. Now, she works as a labor union organizer for the Hotel Workers of America. Lebe believes that unions are necessary for granting workers reasonable wages, job security and vacation days.

SLAP is engaging in efforts to allow Swarthmore’s hotel workers to organize despite the fact that arrangements made for the construction of the hotel are not at all definite. When asked whether their efforts could be considered premature, Malishchak said, “The administration is going to make the decision [on the inn] by February. If we’re going to have a say, we have to speak up now.”

SLAP member Megan Long ’12 said, “We see the contract negotiations as the perfect time to bring up this discussion.” Both Long and Malishchak also emphasized that SLAP’s efforts to ensure that workers can unionize in the future are in no way interfering with their autonomy.

“We are not organizing any workers. We are merely guaranteeing them the right to organize,” Malishchak said. Both she and Long resented the charge that SLAP’s efforts could be seen as patronizing.

No groups on campus have publicly opposed SLAP’s campaign so far. In fact, their efforts have met with widespread support on campus. According to Malishchak, eight student groups have endorsed SLAP’s current campaign, although she said that she didn’t have the right to identify the groups at the time of the interview. While SLAP is clearly behind current efforts, White Women Confronting Racism and the Womyn of Color Collective, two Swarthmore coalitions, have signed onto SLAP’s efforts. Malishchak was confident that the administration would be amenable to the campaign’s concerns. “I’m sitting down formally with the administration next week,” Malishchak said. “Knowing that Swarthmore has been very responsive to student concerns in the past, I would say that I am hopeful an arrangement will be reached.”

SLAP’s activities are not limited to the hotel campaign. SLAP member Loretta Gary ’09 described the organization as a multi-pronged operation that has effectively utilized a “divide-and-conquer strategy” to cover a lot of ground, delegating different teams to tackle a variety of campaigns aimed at improving the quality of workers’ occupational environments.

According to Gary, “SLAP has been really effective in generating discussions with workers about how we can help them achieve their goals.” SLAP is currently working with mushroom farmers in nearby Kennett Square — the self-proclaimed “mushroom capital of the world” — in their efforts to unionize. Since much of the workers’ campaign literature was originally written in Spanish, Swarthmore students have stepped up to translate the pamphlets into English and increase the campaign’s visibility to potential donors interested in backing the workers financially.

Gary has also began work on a documentary on the intimidation tactics that can often deter workers from pursuing unionization. According to Gary, the different projects all share the common objective of “standing up for the rights of labor workers and promoting a respectful workplace.”

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