Expressing Council's support for food service workers at the Philadelphia Sports Complex and urging Aramark to negotiate fair and equitable contracts that provide these workers with a standard minimum wage and healthcare coverage.

WHEREAS, Food service workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 274 and employed by Aramark at the three professional sports stadiums in Philadelphia’s Sports Complex are in negotiations for new collective bargaining agreements with their employer; and

WHEREAS, Workers and their representatives at UNITE HERE have been negotiating the terms of new collective bargaining agreements with Aramark since December 2023, but these negotiations have not resulted in agreements that meet the needs of workers and provide fair, family-sustaining wages and reasonable healthcare benefits. Seeing insufficient progress in negotiations, workers employed by Aramark at the Wells Fargo Center voted to authorize a strike at that facility, with 92% of members voting in favor, and engaged in a one-day strike on April 9, 2024, the first strike at the facility in over 20 years; and

WHEREAS, Key issues in the ongoing negotiations between UNITE HERE and Aramark include workers’ demands for standard minimum wage rates across the three stadium venues and for healthcare coverage to be provided to individuals who work for Aramark year-round at the Sports Complex. Currently, individuals performing the same work for Aramark at different stadiums are paid different hourly minimum rates and many of those who work at the Sports Complex year-round are unable to access employer-sponsored healthcare and other benefits to which full-time employees should be entitled; and

WHEREAS, UNITE HERE’s reasonable demand for a standardized contract covering all three venues in the Sports Complex would address unfair pay disparities across facilities and allow more workers to qualify for paid leave, healthcare, and other benefits; and

WHEREAS, Philadelphia has a proud and long-standing history of labor activism. Labor unions have helped to uplift working families by successfully advocating for fair wages, access to benefits, and safe, healthy working conditions for workers, advances that have been a key driver of economic mobility and stability for working families in Philadelphia; and

WHEREAS, Hard-working Philadelphians are entitled to fair, family-sustaining wages and access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits for full-time work, and ensuring fair pay and access to benefits for working families is a matter of basic justice; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, THAT THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, Hereby expresses its support for food service workers at the Philadelphia Sports Complex and urges Aramark to negotiate fair and equitable contracts that provide these workers with a standard minimum wage and healthcare coverage.

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