Seth Newton Patel at the Kalmanovitz initiative for Labor and the Working Poor sends us this report on the organization’s first in a series of Kalmanovitz Initiative events exploring the state and future of collective bargaining, the Collective Bargaining Project.

Georgetown University Aramark workers, students and faculty joined in a panel this week to describe their successful campaign to organize a union of Aramark food service workers with UNITEHERE. Two workers from the union organizing committee, two student activists and Georgetown History professor Michael Kazin (who wrote a piece on the campaign in The New Republic) spoke on a panel moderated by the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s Executive Director Joseph McCartin.

Each panelist shared moving stories of a campaign that began by quietly building organization among workers, students, faculty, and faith leaders and ultimately gained support within the university administration. The result of union recognition has led to building a more inclusive campus community. This community manifested itself at the event, as many workers and students in attendance were moved to add their stories to those shared by panelists. Faculty present also contemplated what this campaign could mean for colleges and universities beyond Georgetown—whether it might encourage both similar organizing campaigns and administration adoption of policies recognizing workers’ choice to form a union. Georgetown’s Just Employment Policy is an example of such a policy.

The event was co-sponsored by the Georgetown Solidarity Committee, Georgetown College Democrats, MEChA de Georgetown and the Center for Social Justice.