'Lunch Ladies' Dish Out Support for Union

"Lunch ladies," the women who dish out nutrition on a daily basis to the students in the East Penn School District, attended Monday's meeting of the board of school directors because they want to keep their jobs.

Federal law mandates that school districts bid out food services, but this year, for the first time, the East Penn School District has asked food management companies to include managment company workers in their bids, according to Karen Haldeman, secretary of the East Penn Foodcrafters Association, the local workers' bargaining unit.

"We got a letter from a lawyer that said if we want to keep our own workers, we must find a way to make up for the $82,000 our salaries cost the district," she said.

If they don't, she said, it will mean the jobs of all 66 East Penn lunch ladies. Three of them—the highest paid—earn $22,000 a year.

Former Lunch Lady Risa Donegan spoke for the women—and men—in the room.

"Lunch ladies can be the first line to understanding if there's a problem in the family. They know who's buying lunch and who's not," she said.

And if there's a child who was buying lunch and stops they're the first to know if maybe there's no money. And they can take care of that by alerting the people who can be sure the child has enough to eat, she said.

Outsourcing has been known to backfire, she added, referencing a school district in which there was a scramble to hire the lunch ladies back.

Donegan suggested maybe trying to save some money on professional conferences for faculty and staff members before adding that the lunch ladies also have a stake in the East Penn community.

Indeed, the lunch ladies handed out an information sheet before the meeting that statistically tells who they are:

• There are 66 members of the foodcrafters bargaining unit in the East Penn School District
• 28 have lived in the district for a total of 803 years.
• Some attended East Penn schools and among them they have or had 66 children or grandchildren attend East Penn schools.
• Among them, they have earned 231 credits of career-specific training in nutrition, slicer and knife training, serving children with allergies and special needs, identifying what state reimbursable lunch is, CPR, EpiPen use and more.

When asked after the meeting why the lunch ladies were there, East Penn School Board President Charles Ballard said the contract for Nutrition Inc., the district's food management company, is up on June 30 and that the state now requires that the district go out for bid on cafeteria workers to save money.

He did not mention that East Penn asked the management company for the first time to include workers in their bid to the district.

The issue will be discussed by the board and will be indicated on the agenda, he said, though he did not know when that would be.