Recently, employees at the bank headquarters in RI have been told that, starting on December 23rd, the contract for Eurest will be dropped and replaced with another subsidiary of Compass Group- Flik. The General Manager has seemingly gone to everyone individually to tell us all the same thing: that everything will stay the same, except for the name.
The bank has been extremely picky with the catering services that have been offered at their corporate headquarters, as is evident by the months of complaining from the woman in charge of hiring the companies that run food service. The decision to switch companies from Eurest to Flik comes from their desire for more “fine dining” in the catering services. However, they desire the lower pricing that Eurest offers, and it is only because they are both under Compass Group that the decision was able to be made by the parent company that Flik will replace Eurest without a big different in pricing. This will ensure that such a big client won’t be lost.
When it comes to hourly, it would make sense that an account take-over would keep the staff, and it is not unreasonable to believe what the GM has said. However, the catering supervisor was talking with one of her staff, and she claimed that the story the GM was telling was a lie. She claims that there is a possibility that the current staff will be affected. According to the head of catering, Flik is actually not guaranteeing anyone a position after the switch, and instead it will be a process of re-interviewing and re-hiring that takes place, where current employees will have priority over new hires. These are similar things, but different, and to hear multiple stories certainly raises doubts about what will happen come December. And while we can’t jump to conclusions on things that aren’t confirmed, the GM certainly isn’t a reliable source. For one, she has avoided mentioning in multiple of these one-on-one conversations that management will be changing at all, which they certainly will- a fact that has been backed up by the head chef.
So we are left with the following two possibilities: either the new company keeps all hourly as they are, or the new company does a rehiring process for all the staff. In both of these circumstances, it is important that we prepare ourselves for the new company to not respect our current staff and begin layoffs or changing schedules. This is always a possibility; even when we expect long-term consistency, our jobs are ultimately up to the whim of a boss who doesn’t like us, or a corporate head who doesn’t care. And we could move on to a new job, where conditions might be better, but has an equal chance of being just as bad or worse. We need to ask ourselves if we are prepared to fight to keep our jobs.
Due to our numbers, a powerful organization within our shop wouldn’t evencomprise of that many people. And due to conditions of our workplace, even half of the employees participating in an action would be crippling to production. We do have leverage; as a unified shop organization, we can use the threat of a work stoppage to secure the promise of our job. And following through, we should be prepared to strike or walkout if promises are rolled back and jobs are cut.
We need to determine what is true and make sure everyone is on the same page about the future of their job. We need to spread the word about our situation not only within the food service staff, but to other lower-level departments within the bank like the janitorial and security staff, and potentially even certain sympathetic office staff. Despite this being a problem particular to the food service department, we need all the support we can get to ensure that we will be employed at the end of the year.