On April 6, 1995, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11, the union for dining and housing workers on campus, rallied in front of Tommy Trojan – a statue symbolic of Trojan pride located directly in front of Bovard. USC’s contract with Local 11 was due to expire at the end of June. At the rally, march, and subsequent street-theater performance called "The USC You Never See," workers and faculty members expressed hope for a better contract, one that not only prohibited subcontracting, but also provided “better wages, benefits, and job security.”

The more immediate issue, however, was subcontracting. In 1994, Despite USC’s commitment to a “Strategic Plan,” a set of goals with regard to USC’s positive leadership role within the surrounding local community, USC had decided to subcontract summer jobs. Rather than retain the workers hired directly by USC, external, non-union companies would hire the summer workers, more often than not at less pay and without benefits, while one-third of USC’s workers would be unemployed for the summer without medical benefits and unemployment insurance (by state law, employees of educational institutions were banned from collecting unemployment benefits during term breaks). 

Image 1: HERE Local 11, "USC Subcontracting Our Jobs = Poverty in South Central," Photograph, 1995. Used with permission.

The union brought a grievance against USC for the subcontracted jobs in summer 1994, and even though USC settled with Local 11 in October 1995, providing $45,000 in compensation for lost wages, the university insisted that USC did not violate any agreement, and still reserved the right to subcontract. So, workers and faculty protested. They marched through campus to protest a stalemate in contract negotiations caused by the university’s insistence on retaining the right to subcontract.

In late April 1995, the Student Senate passed a resolution reproaching the university for lowering the living standards of the surrounding community with its summer layoffs. The Senate demanded that USC “find a resolution to this labor dispute that respects the interests of the children and families of our local community by maintaining year-round employment for the University’s service employees.” Students and faculty held USC responsible to its own standards of commitment to the community. In letters to then-USC President Sample, two professors cited the Strategic Plan and urged the university “to begin negotiating in good faith” to “reach a swift and just conclusion” – a new contract. On the day the Student Senate passed its resolution, about one hundred people, including students, gathered to hear Dolores Huerta speak on campus. She expressed support for the workers, and emphasized the need for unity. USC did not respond. Local 11 marched again on April 27, 1995. 

 
In the meantime, the union and workers met with USC’s management five times from the beginning of April to the beginning of May 1995, with little result. María Elena Durazo, the then-President of Local 11, reported on the lack of progress to concerned USC faculty. She explained that the university wanted unlimited rights to subcontracting, which would change the then-current union contract that required the university take steps to protect USC employees’ rights, and also required the subcontractor “to offer employment considerations first to displaced Union employees and maintain minimum wage rates.” 

Workers at USC continued to protest throughout 1995. They would not strike, since Local 11 knew that USC had a “strike contingency plan,” by which it could, backed by federal labor law, permanently replace any striking workers. So, they demonstrated instead. Fifteen unionized workers were arrested in June for blocking Vermont Avenue. As a result of demonstrations by Local 11 and the dining and housing workers, USC received an injunction in 1995 prohibiting Local 11 from “picketing, marching, parading, handbilling, displaying banners, or demonstrating” on campus without prior permission from campus police.

Both USC and Local 11 attempted to reach an agreement until USC refused to negotiate further, and allowed the contract to expire. The dining and housing workers consequently worked without a contract from July 1995 to October 1999. A letter signed by fifty-seven faculty members sent to President Sample in February 1997, warning the university that if it did not remove the contract clause insisting on the university’s right to subcontract workers, USC’s consequent reputation as an example of “unfair labor practices on the national stage will be utterly disastrous for our reputation,” did not sway the university’s course. 

Students began to be involved in supporting the workers during this time. MEChA, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán de USC, a Chicano student group founded on campus in 1971, co-hosted with Local 11 a celebration, “Dia de los Muertos,” for students and the dining and housing workers, on November 2, 1995. The event flyer reads, “Support the Food Service and Housing workers as we fight against Poverty and Injustice. Support our union demands for Job Security, Benefits and Liveable Wages.” The students called for a dinner in Founders Park, next to the administration building, and a procession through campus.

The workers went on strike in late April 1998, despite fear of reprisal. In May, Local 11 organized a protest of students and workers, including two hundred striking employees. They disrupted commencement, blocked intersections near campus, and held a mock graduation. Although the rally left most USC students and their families undisturbed, several decided to participate in the mock graduation instead of the university’s proceedings. The protesters received diplomas in justice. A union spokesman explained that since graduation indicated a growth in knowledge and social consciousness, the workers were conferring their own degrees “because it’s clear USC has no sense of justice.” LAPD officers arrested thirty-seven of the protesters, including then-president of Local 11 María Elena Durazo, civil rights activist Reverend James Lawson, and some USC students, for blocking intersections. 

Then, the co-Salutatorian of the Class of 1998 protested USC’s treatment of the dining and housing workers in an editorial he wrote in May, after graduation. While encouraging students to donate to the strike fund, he reasoned that in light of USC’s recent successful billion-dollar Building on Excellence campaign, the University should be able to “treat the lowest-paid members of the Trojan family with dignity.” This statement became a theme of the student labor rights movement – that if justice did not inspire the university to display a social consciousness, it still had ample resources to provide its workers with the chance for a decent living.

Students had mobilized in support of USC’s dining and housing workers’ fight for a new contract, and USC’s janitors’ fight for union representation, often risking arrest in the process. Their convictions about the injustices that characterized the university’s relationship to the workers drove their organizing efforts. Graduate and undergraduate students, recognizing the need for unified and effective student action, consolidated themselves into an autonomous organization through which they directed their student-based organizing efforts on behalf of the workers on campus. They named their new organization the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE). 

The students’ role in the dining and housing workers' contract fight became even more prominent in the fall of 1998, at the beginning of a new academic year. On the first day of classes in September, about seventy students, including SCALE, marched through USC’s campus with clergy members dedicated to justice. The issue was still USC’s refusal to sign a contract prohibiting subcontracting. The workers themselves were unable to participate in the demonstration because of the injunction, but students and clergy members sang hymns during the march, and delivered flowers to the workers and a report to President Sample, detailing the grievances of workers who were being treated poorly.

Image 2: Gina Ferazzi, "Protesters march Wednesday onto the USC campus," Photograph, Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1998, B3. Used with permission.

In November 1998, SCALE and Local 11 garnered student and worker support for a four-day-long fast at United University Church on campus and subsequent rally; more than thirty workers and a group of students joined the effort. In March of 1999, two days after the Graduate and Professional Student Senate voted unanimously on a resolution supporting the workers, SCALE hosted a rally at which a panel of Local 11 representatives and religious and community leaders discussed the importance of student involvement in the contract fight. They believed that USC would pay attention to criticism of its treatment of the workers if it came from the students paying to attend the university. The event, organized by SCALE, was supported by twenty other student organizations. A reverend present at the event told students, “You cannot just sit at a corner on campus, studying and sipping your food while ignoring those who served you this food. You cannot ignore those workers who, in many ways, have supported your educational success.” 

Several members of USC’s administration were invited to the event to respond to the workers’ concerns. When no administrators appeared, the students took their absence as evidence of the university’s disdain for the entire negotiation process, and as reason for further action. More than two hundred students, staff, and community and religious leaders began fasting in May in a Hunger Strike for Justice, a fast that lasted until October. Between ten and twenty-five students involved in the fast gathered in front of Tommy Trojan every day, receiving media attention for their activities and putting pressure on the administration. At the beginning of the next academic year, on August 31, 1999, over two hundred students, parents, and religious leaders marched to President Sample’s office, then blocked traffic at the intersection of Hoover and 32nd Street by sitting down in the street around a banner reading, “Justice for USC workers.” LAPD officers in full riot gear arrested more than twenty of the protesters. The student, parent, and staff participants responded by deciding to hold monthly rallies until a fair contract was won.

An alternative route to victory appeared when the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance in September 1999. The ordinance required all businesses holding more than $100,000 in city contracts to provide their service workers with job security. If a business were to subcontract work, the subcontractor had to rehire the workers affected for ninety days. After the City Council approved the ordinance, workers symbolically passed on the Hunger Strike for Justice to SCALE and other students. Hailing the ordinance as a step in the direction of a new, fair contract, MEChA, SCALE, and Local 11 hosted a teach-in at the United University Church for over fifty faculty, staff, and students. One professor said, “I am optimistic that the issue centering on job security will soon be resolved. I am confident that with the support of faculty, staff, students and the Los Angeles City Council Worker City Retention Ordinance that USC will soon be able to do the right thing.” She was right: the contract was won on October 5, 1999.

Local 11 and USC signed a five-year contract in which USC retained the right to subcontract as it determined necessary.

To celebrate the contract, SCALE sponsored an event at which Dolores Huerta and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would speak about the workers’ struggle. Jon Wilhelm, then-general president of HERE, would also speak. Hundreds of students, faculty, and workers attended.

Jesse Jackson cautioned students to consider the contract not as a conclusion to the labor fight, but as a step in the direction of justice. He lauded the students’ and workers’ unity in the fight, remarking that “This will be one of the many victories in many campuses across the U.S. This is a victory for the working people.” Jesse Jackson joined hands with the workers and students, celebrating the victory.

Image 3: Brendan Loy, "At a S.C.A.L.E.-sponsored rally, Rabbi Steven Jacobs, Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Jesse Jackson join hands with the USC community to celebrate the victory of H.E.R.E. Local 11's housing and dining workers in securing a fair contract with the university," Trojan Horse Vol. 2, Issue 1, Fall 1999. Used with permission.

Between 2011 and 2012, SCALE increased its involvement in the dining workers’ fight once again, as the workers lost hours and benefits and reported harassment and unfair treatment by their managers.  A crowd of thirty students and fifteen workers shouted “Sí, se puede! Sí se puede!” – a slogan originally coined by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, founders of the United Farm Workers’ union, meaning, “Yes, we can!” – as they marched out of Bovard Administration building after delivering a letter and a statement to President Nikias in April, 2012. 

They protested the fact that USC had not given its hospitality workers their summer assignments, even though the start of “summer,” meaning the end of the 2011-2012 academic year, was less than a month away. The workers did not yet know if they would need to find other jobs in order to be able to support their families during the three-and-a-half-month long hiatus between academic years. After a comparable delay in notification the previous summer, the workers USC did not hire for the summer were not able to find work, and consequently could not feed their families, lost their houses or apartments, and incurred debt they are still struggling to pay. 

The university did not respond kindly to the delegation; after students and workers left the president’s office, eight campus security vans were seen parked outside Bovard, and a few of the workers received threatening letters for participating in the delegation.

Image 4: Cara Palmer, "Worker Delegation: DPS Response," Photograph, April 2012. Used with permission.

In 2012, workers received their summer assignments just a few days ahead of summer break, but, fortunately, USC employed many of them over the summer.