Students Rally in Support of Workers

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Published over 2 years ago

The Workers’ Support Committee (WSC) held a rally outside of Hahn prior to the 11th Annual Student-Trustee Retreat to protest the changes in housekeeping staff policies and highlight workers’ concerns last Friday.After cries of “Si, se puede” (Yes, we can), WSC member Sam Gordon PO ’11 opened up the rally.“To me, this event is a celebration of our values and of our staff,” he said, addressing over 200 5-C students, faculty, and staff. “And I am ecstatic to see this many bodies and minds engaging the critical issues we’re addressing by being here—justice, community, and equality.”WSC member Katie Duberg PO ’10 followed with an impassioned speech expressing her dissatisfaction with what she considered Pomona’s oppressive labor policies.“Workers at Pomona College take care of our most fundamental needs,” Duberg said. “They feed us, they make our home safe and clean and livable and beautiful. And yet the company that they work for forces them to break their bodies doing these things.”Duberg said Pomona, despite its “rhetoric about community,” exploits its workers in the same way that countless exploitative employers do all across the globe.“The fact remains that it—like every other profit-making institution—exalts the success of the few which is built on the backs of the silent, hard labor of the many,” Duberg said. “And today we are standing in solidarity with workers in a larger struggle.”Former housekeeper Rosa Rodriguez, who worked for 13 years before terminating employment with the college due to medical conditions, followed with criticisms of the new teams system.“If they think it’s so easy like that, having them in groups, have them come in and try do it themselves and show them the steps it take[s] to do that much,” Rodriguez said.In April 2009, Nick Gerber PO ‘10, a member of WSC, sent a letter to The Student Life summarizing Rodriguez’s termination.According to Gerber’s letter, Rodriguez received a job-related injury in Spring 2008. For the next year, Pomona “repeatedly required [Rodriguez] to do more work than allowed under safety procedures.”Ultimately, a doctor informed Rodriguez that she was permanently disabled and could not continue working. However, she was given time to obtain a second medical opinion.Rodriguez obtained a second opinion clearing her of work restrictions last March. However, according to Gerber’s letter, “this occurred just after the College’s self-imposed one-year deadline for resolving all such cases. Thus [she] was given a final termination notice.”Gerber said Pomona has failed to provide workers an avenue for expressing concerns for much of its past.“There’s been a long history of this need for addressing the way that concerns that staff have get addressed and so [we’re] trying to just get that information more widely available and widely known,” Gerber said.However, Vice President and Treasurer Karen Sisson expressed certain concerns with the means the WSC used to criticize the administration.“From the point of advocacy, I respect what they’re trying to do,” Sisson said. “On the other hand, I’ve been troubled by the way facts have been portrayed in a couple of flyers [and] reliance on admittedly dated data…That is disturbing to me because it gives the impression that all of us are part of that history when in fact we’re new. Personally, it’s disappointing.”Moreover, Sisson said WSC actually acted as an impediment to communication between the employees and their managers.“It seems to me a little bit paternalistic that they need to speak for them,” Sisson said. “And that’s one thing I worry about with the WSC, is that we put a group—a very well meaning group, by the way—but we’re basically putting someone in between the workers that have issues and management and it’s kind of like telephone—sometimes gets lost in the translation.”Duberg, Gerber and many other members of the WSC, however, emphasized their efforts to avoid speaking for the workers.“We’re not going to say, ‘this is how we’re going to solve this problem,’ because it’s a matter of changing it so staff can,” Gerber said. “They’re prepared to have these conversations, they’re just not able.”Andrew deJong PO ‘13, said he found the rally somewhat overwhelming, but informative.““I was interested in the cause, I honestly didn’t know that much,” deJong said. “Most people knew why they were there, but I thought it was good to go to figure out a little more...I was impressed, there was a bunch of people there. The tone was a little more intense than I expected.”

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