Workers picket Winter Classic

The Winter Classic is the most-watched, nationally televised hockey game of the year, including Canadian viewers. As hockey players in the Winter Classic hustled on ice Jan. 2 to score goals, over 200 UNITE HERE members and supporters picketed outside the Classic at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia for more essential goals. Concession-stand workers, beer vendors, suite attendants and cashiers are fighting for health care, wages and improved working conditions from Aramark, the international corporation that provides food to many of the sports venues, universities and prisons around the world.

Aramark workers came to the spirited, two-hour demonstration from sports venues organized by UNITE HERE in New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Food and beer vendors from Pittsburgh’s Consol Arena, who recently turned down Aramark’s latest offer, came with a banner and strong voices. Despite the cold mid-30s temperatures, Occupy Philly activists, as well as members of the teachers union, Service Employees union and other labor organizations, chanted, marched and heard CBP workers explain their struggle.

The Philadelphia-based food service provider reportedly earned $13 billion in 2011, and is listed as the 189th largest employer of Fortune 500 companies. Yet the company is demanding that the workers accept the elimination of overtime pay and a reduction in the minimum number of hours they get paid during each game — in effect a pay cut.

One union member still in his beer vendor uniform, who came to the picket line at the end of the game, explained to the crowd that there are co-workers who work 250 days a year, five to ten hours a day. They work in Citizens Bank Park (baseball), Lincoln Financial Field (football) and the Wells Fargo Center (hockey/basketball) for sports, concerts and other events.

This union worker further explained to Workers World that Aramark treats each employee as a part-time worker for each venue, refusing to combine hours from each location so that workers would qualify for more benefits, such as health care. “That’s our business model” is the company argument when workers maintain that the same Aramark name is on the paycheck from each venue, so benefits should be based on the combined work from all three locations.

UNITE HERE Local 274 contends only 240 of the 1,500 employees are eligible for basic health insurance benefits, and Aramark’s contract proposal would reduce the number of eligible workers to 81. CBP workers in Philadelphia earn an average of $11 an hour, much less than Aramark workers in Boston’s Fenway Park, who average $12.32 an hour.

Local 247 members have been working under the old contract since February 2011. The workers turned down Aramark’s latest offer in September by a vote of 570 to 240.

— Report & photo by Joe Piette