“They just haven’t found robots able to do our job yet,” Alex said. “I’m sure if they could they would.”The manner in which the work is divided up means that every job is two shades away from complete automation. The people involved are not there for their human traits, but because the work simply hasn't been reorganized for full automation quite yet.
The fact that only last year Sodexo agreed to abide by a living wage agreement, is one of many factors that illustrates the corporations attitudes towards workers. They tout these jobs as opportunities for workers, but in reality they are merely consequential byproducts of their quest. They are no more to the company than the sum of their mechanical contributions, and their pay reflects this. Wage theft, overwork, and frenzied scheduling are all commonly reported by the students and employees who work so hard to serve us our food. If the pizzas and taco meat could be prepared and presented through automation.
The problem with employers who see labor in this way is that once the labor is outmoded, they have no pretenses in which to continue offering the opportunity of paid work to the unskilled, unprivileged, or uneducated. Because their income is guaranteed, it is also fixed. That means the only thing they can do as a business to improve profits is cut costs. And thus their modus operandi, even more so than non contractual income corporations such as Wal-Mart or BMW, is to cut costs. BMW can attempt to find more customers, or sell more food, but Sodexo would actually like to serve as little food as possible! They only care to secure the contract, and lower the cost of production.
Because of this, students can expect for the food to never substantially increase in quality or availability. Employers can expect for wages to continually be repressed. Attempts at unionizing have also resulted in firings based on individual workers' political stances. Quite frankly, there should never be a price on someones opinion, but holding a minimum wage job over a workers head for their political stance is certainly not appropriate.
When students allowed for the school to purchase lunches from Sodexo on our behalf, we guaranteed them an income based largely on almost unconditional college loans. These should be going towards our education, but the company has found its way into these funds. And the moment they can drop all employees, they will. Furthermore, our tuition costs would be cut quite severely if we were not obligated to dine through Sodexo.
This issue reaches beyond Sodexo though, because these trends are applicable to the entire economy. The more we financially support companies that hire humans for simply interfacing with machines, the more we will have to blame ourselves for the inevitable replacement of all but the most powerful jobs by those holding them. When Ithaca College guarantees four semesters worth of our food budget to Sodexo, the institution forsakes the community businesses that offer better wages, friendlier service, better food, and lower costs.
We should instead reward companies that honor the humanity behind every worker, which leads me to look towards local providers as better options. I am in no way against the impending automation of labor, but if it is ushered in by entities that have already forsaken their employees' human qualities, we will not be able to trust them to suddenly value them once they have no purpose for human's at all.
Because we cannot change how much we pay them, we can cannot effectively communicate what we expect of them. We are not their customers, we are simply their consumers. Employees are not valued contributors, but simple mechanisms. It's time we address this issue split identity faced us all.
Ithaca College Dining Service must seriously rethink the options around providing food options to college students. It is time our bubble behaved as a part of the community down the hill, instead of draining it of its resources and customers.
My previous articles have mainly dealt with contract law as it pertains to the distribution and quality of information, but here on campus, its much more tangible than that. In this case, contract law has filled our bodies with sub par food, our school with unhappy workers, and drained our wallets. If we opened up our doors to local vendors, who would offer more diversified work, better food, and more choice.
