According to house keepers, Linda Schlabach has been put on leave. According to union representatives, both Duke Human Resources and the Office of Institutional Equity are formally investigating the allegations that Schlabach humiliated and abused the Hispanic housekeepers she managed in the Edens Quadrangle. We applaud Duke’s clear commitment to justice in the workplace.
Schlabach’s removal, however, cannot be the end of action. The more people we talk to, the more we hear of similar cases of mistreatment in the hospital, on East Campus, on the buses. Now more than ever, the demographic realities of North Carolina’s growing immigrant workforce insist upon the necessity of muscular and nuanced union representation—by not having any Spanish-speaking representatives, Local 77 did not effectively protect the rights of its Hispanic members.
According to Michael Gibson, Local 77’s general manager, Schlabach exploited her workers’ limited English proficiency to systematically misrepresent the union’s purpose—portraying it not as a defender of workers, but instead as a menacing HR-like body that would punish disobedient employees. Union representatives Wade Cotton and William McKnight say that they were never approached directly by any of the Hispanic housekeepers in Schlabach’s zone. After receiving doctor’s instructions to stop working with asthma-aggravating cleaning solutions, housekeeper Sebastiana Flores claimed she was forced by Schlabach to continue using them, a case, which according to Cotton and McKnight, would have been immediately resolved if reported.
Schlabach’s case remains, however, a single visible instance of a historical struggle between labor and management at Duke.
“Pride, dignity and respect aren’t extraordinary problems,” said Gibson, who is representing the housekeepers in hearings with Human Resources. “They’re everyday problems. And even if you still plucked Linda from the face of the earth, we’d still be fighting the same fight for pride, dignity and respect. In 1967, we were fighting the same fight. Eating lunch in the basement, trying to get health insurance—we’ve been fighting for decades. The fight isn’t different.”
Duke, 1965. Oliver Harvey was fed up with poor working conditions, few benefits and low pay. Organizing with other non-academic staff on campus—the vast majority of whom were black—the night-shift janitor founded Local 77, a chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Duke had admitted its first black students just four years before, and then—just as today—the politics of race and class confounded the high egalitarian principles of the academy. President Douglas Knight made regular tee times at the all-white Hope Valley Country Club, and campus workers were still required to address the overwhelmingly white undergraduates as “mister” and “miss.”
Progress was short and hard-earned. It took two series of student-led protests—three demonstrations in 1967 and a 1,000-person occupation of Main Quad and the president’s lawn in 1968—for the University to agree to raise worker’s pay to the $1.60-an-hour federal minimum. It took another four years for Local 77 to be officially recognized. In each of these demonstrations, students organized and acted alongside workers: an acknowledgement of the essential relationship between labor and the University community.
The essential nature of this relationship hasn’t changed in 40 years. But as primary consumers of the services provided by housing and dining workers, undergraduates now contribute to the problems that these same workers face. We do this when we drunkenly damage HDRL property and dispute the charges, when we complain about the quality of service at the Marketplace, when we angrily shoot off emails about getting left by a C-1. Each time, we allow the possibility of another supervisor to exploit the disunity of workers and students. Each time, we allow for the possibility of more abuse. Who will Human Resources choose to believe when called to arbitrate a dispute? Who holds the power of credibility?
Just as student action was critical to the recognition of Local 77 in 1972, students must now also stand in solidarity with workers. We must acknowledge—and not be intimidated by—the socioeconomic differences between students and workers. We must accept their generosity and reciprocate with our own.
We need to understand the systems that support us in terms of their constituent parts: individuals who are grandparents, immigrants, mothers, friends.
Get to know your dorm’s housekeeper. Meet the server of your meal.
Understand their challenges as complex and worthy.
To do so is to make our community strong.
Haley Millner, Trinity ’14, Julie Rivo, Trinity ’13 and Tong Xiang, Trinity ’13 are co-founders of Duke Student Action with Workers. This column is the fourth installment in a semester-long series of weekly columns written by dPS members addressing civic service and engagement at Duke. In solidarity,
Lizzeth Alarcon
Co-President, Duke Students for Humane Borders
Nana Asante
President (2011-2012), Black Student Alliance
Deja Beamon
President, Center for Race Relations
Elena Botella
President, Duke Democrats
Shaoli Chaudhuri, Laura Mistretta
Co-Presidents, Duke Students for Humane Borders
Shirley Lope
President, Omega Phi Beta Sorority Inc., Omicron chapter
Fernando Revelo de la Rota and Bedsairy “Betsy” Santoyo
Co-Presidents, Mi Gente
Olly Wilson
Co-founder, Duke Activist Mentoring Network
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