When students and workers protested the opening of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery last week, they did so after a semester-long campaign and as part of a carefully planned escalation strategy.

The issue at hand is the privatization of food service at the WID. As such, the employees of these restaurants are not guaranteed the same benefits or wages as every other campus employee.

The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 171 represents over 1,600 blue-collar workers on campus and has fought to guarantee them a living wage, affordable health care and fair representation. In contrast, Food Fight, the private company contracted to run the WID restaurants, pays their employees barely above minimum wage and offers an unaffordable health care plan. Working families cannot support themselves on $8.50/hour.

The exploitation of workers on campus is absolutely unacceptable. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation defends this privatization of food service through a plethora of legal technicalities and in doing so merely proves that they are willing to exploit Madison workers in an effort to turn a greater profit.

The WID validates these actions through the facts that it is part of a “public-private partnership” and that 70 percent of the building is controlled by private interests. The logic that the WID can gerrymander the building into areas where they can disregard the ethics and governing principles of the University of Wisconsin is extremely questionable and becomes even more debatable when the unionized janitorial staff services 100 percent of the building.

The Student Labor Action Coalition and AFSCME understand that these arguments might hold up in court; our outrage is not in regards to legality, but rather, to basic human rights.

SLAC and AFSCME have been running the campaign to stop the privatization of campus jobs for the past four months and are well aware of the legal arguments, despite The Badger Herald’s assertions.

SLAC knows this campaign will not be easily won, but also knows that this fight is critical because it is emblematic of the problems of the public-private partnership model which Chancellor Biddy Martin touts in her mysterious Badger Partnership.

The fact that the WARF is able to blatantly ignore the ethical standards of the university, from which it receives the totality of its funding, demonstrates that the privatization of the UW will result in a destruction of the university’s mission and values.

The Badger Herald argues that the restaurants should be privately run because “Union food sucks.” As logically sound as this argument may appear, the food quality is not dependent on the treatment of the worker who makes it. The WID could easily allow Food Fight to make the food while also requiring that it employ public workers. It could just as easily allow the Wisconsin Union to manage the restaurants while requiring a new menu.

AFSCME and SLAC demand that the WID hires public, unionized employees, because if we allow the WID to trample on workers’ rights, we are sanctioning the corruption of the Wisconsin Idea and the distortion of social justice on this campus.

Jonah Zinn ([email protected]) and Xander Gieryn ([email protected]) are members of the Student Labor Action Coalition.