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During Wednesday’s Graduate Student Organization Senate meeting, three graduate students shared their experiences as international students working for food services at Syracuse University and their plan to unionize for better pay and better contracts.

There are approximately 750 graduate student food service workers at SU with 350 who work across the five dining halls and food courts across campus, Bertram Probyn, senator-at-large and Graduate Employment Issues Committee member, said. He said all students in food services are looking to unionize.

Probyn and graduate students Hussain Suwasrawala and Vinay Desiraju presented a survey from last spring in collaboration with the GEIC and testimonies regarding food workers’ experiences at work.

At the time the survey was conducted, the pay rate for a general food service employee was $15.30 an hour and $16.16 an hour for a student supervisor, Probyn said. As of this semester, Probyn added the rates are now slightly higher at $15.75 and $17.10 an hour for those same positions. Probyn said that, of all the people surveyed, 55% reported working in multiple locations or having a second job.

International students are on an F-1 visa, meaning they can only work 20 hours per week on campus, according to Suwasrawala, who is pursuing a master’s in engineering management and works at Brockway Dining Hall.

The speakers said the food services management team provides little flexibility and lenience, considering most of their employees are masters students who have an abundance of work and responsibilities.

“We are students first and workers second,” Desiraju said. “We should be absolutely prioritizing our coursework, our exams, our curriculum and I feel that this is absolutely senseless — when there are so many students who are available to cover shifts and we are not allowed to sub more than twice a month even though it’s not possible for us to make work those shifts.”

The survey showed that only 4% of the food service workers feel that management is approachable, Probyn said.

“We are international students,” Desiraju said. “We come here with the dream of living the American life, the American dream and we accept and work any part-time jobs that we are offered. But it feels bad, it feels sad, actually, when we are kind of abused and exploited. This has to change, and we need a voice with GSO on our side supporting our initiative.”

Desiraju said there were “unhygienic working conditions” from his time working in food services. He said in the past that management put a wet rag on a student worker to check if it was “wet enough,” and, another time, a student was asked to fish out a student’s AirPods from the trash with their “bare hands.”

“Just because we have been offered a part-time job, (food service management workers) feel that they can manipulate us to do things that we’re not supposed to be doing because there’s no formal job description for a student worker,” Desiraju said.

Toward the end of the meeting, a senate member motioned to make all future meetings exactly three hours long from their starting time, in response to a portion of “A Resolution to Amend the GSO Constitution.”

Kimmel said he “rejected” the motion, and said it “does not harmonize with the rest of the constitutional document.” The motion will be reviewed by the Rules and Administration Committee and revisited in the next meeting on March 6 in Huntington Beard Crouse Hall’s Kittredge Auditorium.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that 350 of the students in food services are looking to unionize. This is incorrect. The reference to 350 was intended as a breakdown of roughly how many students in food services work in the dining halls. A previous version of this article also attributed experiences with management to Desiraju. This is incorrect. The incident did not happen to him. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Clarification: THE GSO overwhelmingly passed a resolution last night endorsing student food service workers’ union campaign.

Published on February 8, 2024 at 1:38 am

Contact Claire: cksamsta@syr.edu