You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.

The Ridgefield Board of Education thought it would save money and set up healthier cafeteria menus when it switched food service providers from Sodexo to Chartwells, both international behemoths of the school cafeteria industry. So in July, they did. Now, they are dealing with a months-long contract dispute between Chartwells and cafeteria workers.

“I had not been anticipating the reaction we got,” says school business manager Paul Hendrickson.

Similar to most districts in the nation, Ridgefield Public Schools has been feeling pressure to ease their 5,500 students into healthier eating habits. The Board of Ed had even formed a “wellness committee” that called for reducing classroom birthday celebrations to one a month and banning soda machines from the district’s nine schools.

So when Chartwells, which had been appealing to districts with a new health-centric approach, put in an attractive bid to become Ridgefield Public Schools’ food service provider, it seemed like one more way to shave off students’ baby fat.
But Chartwells got off to a rocky start with the school cafeteria workers’ union, an affiliate of the CSEA/SEIU Local 2001. Chartwells wanted to go through and rehire each of the employees, ignoring preexisting orders of seniority and risking pensions. It also wanted to do away with paid sick days, an idea that didn’t sit well with teachers and parents, given it incentivized sick lunch ladies to come in and handle food.

Also, those healthier foods take more time to prepare.

“There’s more cooking, more paperwork and more ordering [food] on the computer,” says Maureen Hulse, the union president who was first hired to work in the schools’ cafeterias 20 years ago. “You have to make the tomato sauce from scratch and roll out every ingredient of the pizza. Before, we had processed food that we just took out of the freezer and put in the oven.”

Hulse says she and her coworkers are onboard for a healthier lunch plan, but it’ll take some more manpower — or, womanpower because the cafeteria staff is mostly female — to implement, and Chartwells doesn’t want to hire any additional workers. In Ridgebury and Branchville elementary schools there are currently only two lunch ladies to make a meal fit for a hippie commune.  

And because the cafeteria workers were not employees of the Board of Education — they work for whichever independent contractor the board picks as a food service provider — there was little the board could do to help them.

So, the cafeteria workers went back to work this fall without a contract (and because of that, without employer-provided health insurance; most have had to go on COBRA). They’ve launched two demonstrations in town and say they are trying to reach a deal with Chartwells, but the conglomerate is acting somewhat slowly.

In a written statement, Chartwells says it has already offered “a fair collective bargaining agreement which includes general wage increases, paid time off, longevity bonus, increased medical benefit offerings, and participation in the company’s 401K plan which replaces the former pension plan.”