Chanting slogans, carrying signs and banging on empty buckets, over 50 students and employees marched from the East Campus bus stop to the Chapel steps Wednesday afternoon to display their solidarity.
At a rally at the Chapel, speakers called for student action to encourage the administration and the rest of the community to support the University's employees both in how they are compensated and treated.
The Student-Employee Relations Committee organized the event in particular to respond to recent controversial flyers posted across East. The flyers attacked the physical appearance and sexual behavior of specific Marketplace employees, as well as of female undergraduates.
"[These flyers] made people come together. It is time to unite and be strong about everything," said Sharron Bradshaw, who spoke about injustices workers face on campus and is an employee of ARAMARK Corp., the food service company that last year assumed management of several on-campus eateries.
SERC was resurrected this year with help from the Progressive Alliance, an umbrella organization for many student groups, to oppose the outsourcing of dining services to ARAMARK. Originally founded in 1992, it had been inactive for several years.
Freshman Bridget Newman, one of the rally's student organizers, said she has been appalled by the disrespect shown toward employees.
"I still have faith in Duke," Newman said. "Many people are not just concerned about social justice but willing to do something about it."
Another motivation behind the rally was to protest the fact that the University has recently outsourced two campus services to corporations. In addition to ARAMARK's management of several dining operations, IKON Office Solutions began running University-owned copying facilities this winter.
SERC argues that outsourcing sacrifices quality, inflates prices and prevents students and employees from developing relationships.
"It's important to support employees, not just through picnics," said sophomore Jessica Rutter, a member of the Progressive Alliance.
Bradshaw complained that the outsourcing contracts made promises to students, but failed to include any guarantees for current employees. She added that officials have prevented employees from meeting with students to discusses issues relating to outsourcing.
Local 77, the labor union that represents University dining employees, among other workers, recommended ARAMARK's coming to campus in March 2001.
Cynthia Brown, a Green Party candidate for the upcoming U.S. Senate race, also attended the rally.
"I am not an average politician--I am a person who understands what it means to sacrifice your health, to live paycheck by paycheck, to have inadequate health care," Brown said.
"Working people are expended, disrespected and marginalized," she said.
Several speakers, including Baldemar Velasquez from the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, an Ohio-based labor group, encouraged students to take an active role in protesting perceived corporate injustices.
"Students in this country have been able to get companies like Nike to [discuss employee working conditions]," Velasquez said.
"If you impede the rich people, anything is possible. All of us need to stick together because people who make money do it off the backs of the poor," Velasquez added.
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