On the Menu at Goldman? A Union Protest

Aramark workers in front of Goldman Sachs' headquarters at 85 Broad Street in lower Manhattan. (Photograph by Allan Tannenbaum/Polaris)

There was a noisy protest today on Wall Street aimed at Goldman Sachs, but it was not investors burned by buying subprime-tied securities while the firm was shorting them.

It was cafeteria workers.

This afternoon, the unions Unite Here and Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, held a rally of food service employees outside One Wall Street, one of two Bank of New York locations where Aramark cafeteria workers are striking.

The rally was followed by a spirited march to Goldman Sachs' front door at 85 Broad Street.

The Aramark employees who were carrying signs and holding banners came from Manhattan cafeterias far and wide -- PricewaterhouseCoopers, the United Nations, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase, to name a few. The unions insist that low pay and inadequate benefits are a problem across the board.

So why is Goldman taking the heat?

Union representatives say they are trying to pressure Goldman Sachs because it is both a client of Aramark, and an owner. A Goldman private equity fund owns 20 percent of the company. Other investors are Thomas H Lee, Warburg-Pincus, and CCMP.

It probably helps that the 2007 payout for Goldman's chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, makes an easy target for anyone making...well...less than $69 million. Goldman's success creates envy and resentment. It's the firm everyone loves to hate.

"With all the press around Goldman's pay packages and bonuses it seems like a fair comparison to draw," said Matt Furshong, a spokesperson for Unite Here and SEIU.

Union materials say that last year the average Goldman Sachs employee made approximately $660,000 while the average Aramark cafeteria employee at Goldman took home only $410 per week -- an inequality that the unions believe Goldman is in a position to remedy.

Never mind that the above figures compare a Goldman employee's pre-tax earnings to Aramark's post-tax - it's not a particularly useful comparison anyway to contrast company executives' compensation against the hourly wages of paid by their service contractors.

A more useful side-to-side would have been to see how Aramark stacks up against its own competitors, like Sodexho or Compass, but union representatives did not have these statistics on hand.

While an Aramark spokeswoman, Kristine Grow, was unable to speak in specifics, she said that the company's wages and benefits were "very competitive" on an industry as well as geographic basis.

"Aramark has a long history of fully supporting our employees' right to choose for themselves on the matter of union representation," Grow said in an email. "This isn't about the treatment of our employees. This is about trying to pressure Aramark into conceding to the union leaders' demands."

Grow contends that the real issue at stake in union negotiations is something called "Card Check/Neutrality", a policy that determines whether or not an employer can interfere in interactions between the unions and employees.

Jacelyn Kessel, a spokesperson for the unions, says that agreeing to a card check/neutrality arrangement would prevent Aramark from using intimidation or harassment to keep employees from joining unions; an Aramark spokesperson counters that by agreeing to card check/neutrality, Aramark would be rendered unable to protect employees from potentially intimidating, dues-hungry, and coercive unions.

Aramark negotiates contracts on a site-by-site basis, and at present only the 32 employees from two Bank of New York sites are actually on strike.

Liz Gunnison