The Pawtucket School Lunch Workers reached an agreement Thursday afternoon in an effort to prevent a one day strike the school lunch workers had planned for Friday. Unite Here Local 26 who represented the lunch workers, called the agreement “a decisive victory for all women who feed the kids and the fight for equal pay.”
Under the agreement the pay gap for Pawtucket School Lunch Workers will dramatically shrink as they receive $1.20 in raises over three years. Unite Here says that after the lunch workers “courageously called attention to the problem of wage discrimination, Aramark Educational Services, LLC and the City of Pawtucket demonstrated that they wanted to be leaders in solving this problem.”
Melanie Plante, a truck driver based out of Jenks Junior High, described the victory: “We will proudly be serving the kids tomorrow. This new Agreement will help all of us improve our lives and raise healthy, happy families.”
Carolyn DeOliveira, lead cook at Nathaniel Greene Elementary, “Our members have worked hard to earn more and to maintain their health benefits. I am really proud to call myself a Pawtucket School Lunch Worker.”
The new three year Agreement covering the 81 school lunch employees will expire in April 2019.
Unite Here Local 26 represents 9,000 hotel, food service, airport, & casino workers across Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The Pawtucket school lunch workers will hold a one day strike on Friday September 23 to highlight the importance equal pay for women if no Agreement is reached. In an effort to avoid the strike, the Pawtucket school lunch workers will be negotiating with their employer, Aramark Educational Services, LLC after school on Thursday, September 22.
The call for equal pay comes weeks after Massachusetts’s Governor Charlie Baker signed a pay equity bill into law making the circumstances occurring in Pawtucket illegal in Massachusetts. The School Lunch employees in Everett, Massachusetts