According to USF, the affected employees—who were, until recently, represented by a labor union—were offered the opportunity to stay on at USF. But, effective next month, they’d work as employees of Southeast Services Corporation, a subsidiary of the Compass Group.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom, the Compass Group is one of the so-called “big three” of food service contractors in the United States, along with Aramark and Sodexo. The multibillion-dollar company contracts with private and public sector employers alike, servicing universities, schools, as well as private companies like Google, where contracted cafeteria workers quietly organized a union during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For one affected maintenance worker at USF, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, the decision to privatize his longtime public sector job felt bitter. For the first time in years, a significant change affecting his job and livelihood wasn’t something to be negotiated, or discussed. Instead, he says he and his coworkers were told of the transition during a staff meeting at USF’s Marshall Center on Oct. 23, three weeks after the agreement was already finalized.
Completely blindsided by the news, the workers were presented with the option to accept the job transition, or otherwise leave. At the end of the meeting, with university police officers on standby, the worker told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that USF management concluded their announcement by flashing USF’s signature bullhorn hand sign, exclaiming, “Go Bulls!” He wasn’t amused.
“What I wanted to do was raise my middle finger up, stand up and give ‘em two of those,” the worker quipped. But, eyeing the cops, he made the less-impulsive decision to refrain.
“Everybody’s kind of just—what can they do?” the worker shared. “We were forced into it.”
“What I wanted to do was raise my middle finger up, stand up and give ‘em two of those.”
This wouldn’t have been the case just a year ago. In January, the labor union that formerly represented facility workers at USF, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was decertified by the state. The decision left hundreds of non-instructional workers at the university—from custodians, to plumbers and clerks—without union representation, or the benefits and protections formerly afforded to them under a union contract. The union representing adjunct faculty at USF, first established in 2018, was similarly decertified in late July.
The majority of Florida workers—about 94%—are non-union. But, if you have a union, your boss can’t just unilaterally outsource or privatize your job. Doing so would require your boss to first bring such a proposal to the union—a collective of employees and elected union leaders who advocate as a unified voice. Before last year, about 26% of Florida’s public sector workforce was unionized, including hundreds of blue-collar workers at USF. As a result of a 2023 law pushed by anti-union special interest groups, however, more than 68,000 formerly-unionized public employees in Florida have since lost their union representation, and by extension, their union contracts.
The Florida law, S.B. 256 ,dubbed “paycheck protection” by its enthusiastic cheerleader Florida Gov. DeSantis, prevents workers from voluntarily paying union dues through an automatic payroll deduction, and requires at least 60% of employees represented by the union to be dues-paying members in order for the union to remain certified. Under Florida’s right-to-work law, becoming a dues-paying member, and thereby financially supporting your union, is entirely voluntary. Increasing union membership can be a challenge.
The USF worker admitted he’s not sure whether having a union in place would have necessarily stopped his job from being privatized, but he believes that workers would have at least had a say. They might have been able to negotiate more time to figure out what they were going to do. While they’ve been told their pay will remain the same moving forward, at least for the foreseeable future, he believes having even two or three months’ time would have given them room to determine the best option for themselves and their families.
“Decertification made it easier for them [USF],” he guessed. “This time ain’t enough.”
USF, which recently gifted a $282,000 raise to its university president, has tellingly pitched this new agreement with the Compass Group as a cost-cutting move, boasting nearly $320 million in cost savings over the life of the 15-year contract. Overall savings include $25 million cost reduction for the contractor’s “enhanced facility operations.” The 209-page proposal, obtained by CL with redactions, also includes a signing bonus of $47 million in unrestricted funds, plus a signing bonus for workers who agree to make the sacrificial transition from a pension-eligible state job to a private job that offers a less desirable 401k retirement plan.
“The biggest piece of all of it is the FRS [Florida Retirement System],” the anonymous worker told CL. “Because we can no longer contribute to it.”
Under the state system, all long-time state employees in Florida are eligible for the Florida Retirement System plan after six to eight years on the job, depending on when you were hired. If you were hired before July 1, 2011, you’re eligible after six years. If you were hired after, you’re eligible for a pension after eight. You get two retirement plan options—an investment plan or a pension plan.
The worker CL spoke to doesn’t believe that he will lose the contributions he’s made over the years to his retirement plan, but USF will no longer contribute to it.
The people who are “really screwed,” he said, are the workers who were not vested with FRS. “They don’t lose their money. They just, they don’t have any defined benefit when they’re done,” he explained.
So, imagine being one year away from qualifying for a state pension plan, and instead of getting that defined benefit, your boss instead privatizes your job, with no guarantee of a pension.
Otherwise, affected staff have been told to expect “business as usual,” come Dec. 1. They’ll be given a new ID, a new uniform, but no immediate effects on their pay. The details, some of which are redacted in the proposal CL received, are unclear.
“Each USF employee’s situation will be taken into consideration during one-on-one personal sessions so that total compensation should be equal to or better than what they are receiving at USF,” a university spokesperson told CL in a statement.
The Compass Group’s proposal “assumes” that 355 of the state workers will accept the transition and stay on at USF. It also “assumes” those workers will receive an 11% wage increase “to cover incremental cost of healthcare premiums and to allow for additional personal investment in their 401(k) plan.”
The issue of job security remains murky. Florida is an at-will state, so the concept of a stable, secure job is already flimsy at best.
“What’s going to happen in a couple years from now?” the worker asked. “Because for the first year, it might be great, you know, but then a couple years down the road, they might say, well, we’re going to change this.”
“That’s the worst part,” he added. “The not-knowing.”
Others in local organized labor are similarly rattled by the move. Brian Nathan, a union official for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 915 and vice president of the West Central Florida Labor Council expressed disappointment with the shift towards privatization, affecting workers that the labor council for years considered their union brothers and sisters. “What do they have now? They have whatever wages they’re going to get from this company, and not much else,” Nathan told CL, grimly.
Most significant though, he said, is that they no longer have their union contract. Their former 59-page union contract with USF—which wasn’t set to expire until Oct. 1, 2025— was rendered unenforceable in January with the decertification of their union, but now the workers will be moving forward with a new employer and a blank slate. Unionized workers on average earn more than their non-union counterparts, and the benefits of union representation are even more pronounced for women and for racial minorities.
“The contract is what protects the workers, sets the expectations and responsibilities for everybody: for the employer, for the workers, what benefits they’re going to get, the conditions of their employment, a grievance procedure if they get fired,” Nathan explained. “Without that, they are exposed. They don’t have the protection. They don’t have any representation. That’s really what is missing for them right now.”
James Spears Jr., who serves as administrator of the union that formerly represented the facilities management workers, described the move by USF as a “radical change” that emphasizes the importance of having union representation.
“It is disheartening to hear that USF’s management has moved so swiftly in eliminating hundreds of good paying jobs by outsourcing them to a private company that will seek to squeeze every cent of profit they can off the backs of the workers,” AFSCME Florida administrator Spears Jr. told CL in a statement. “Unfortunately, Florida’s leadership has developed so many tricks and traps that the will of the workers to have a union voice at USF was silenced.”
The union at USF was officially decertified for failing to petition the state for a recertification election after disclosing a dues-paying membership of less than 60%. Filing for recertification requires the union to gather signed, printed cards of support from at least 30% of employees within 30 days of submitting annual paperwork to the state, disclosing membership numbers. It’s a resource-intensive and time-consuming process that many unions, including a number of AFSCME locals, struggled to prepare for ahead of the full adoption of S.B. 256.
At this point, it’s unclear whether workers of other decertified unions in Florida have similarly faced threats of privatization. Nathan, of the local labor council, wasn’t aware of any comparable cases. Although, AFSCME does represent some contracted workers elsewhere. Up in Jacksonville, for instance, AFSCME is currently in negotiations with Chartwells K-12, another Compass Group subsidiary that provides dining services for Duval County Public Schools. Workers there recently rallied over what they called ‘poverty wages’ from Chartwell, which only pays them Florida’s minimum wage of $13 per hour. Within days, the company reached a tentative deal with the union that would raise minimum pay to $14 an hour this year, and $15 an hour next October.
“We have seen time and time again how outsourcing jobs like this leads to lower pay, more dangerous working conditions, the elimination of benefits and so much more,” said Spears Jr. “The truth is, this points to university leadership seeing their own workers as little more than numbers on a budget spreadsheet.”
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Related Stories
Florida Republicans file bills that would make it harder for government workers to form and keep unions
Florida Republican lawmaker wants tighter rules for union elections
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2024.