Democratic debate to move forward after tentative agreement in labor fight
December 17, 2019
The PBS NewsHour/POLITICO debate among Democratic presidential candidates appears poised to proceed as scheduled on Thursday, after the national party organization helped broker a last-minute resolution to a labor dispute that had threatened to upend the televised forum.
All seven White House contenders who qualified for the debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles threatened Friday to skip the event amid a planned protest by campus workers over their failure to reach a collective bargaining agreement with Sodexo, a global services company that is subcontracted by the university to handle food service operations.
But in a statement Tuesday, UNITE HERE Local 11 — a union representing 150 cashiers, cooks, dishwashers and servers at the university — announced that Sodexo and the workers had “negotiated through Monday evening to secure a tentative contract agreement.”
The news comes after Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez had stepped in to assist with re-starting talks between the Local 11 and Sodexo, which the union said began in March but stalled after workers and students began picketing on campus in November.
“The Democratic National Committee and Tom Perez worked hard to help bring the situation to a positive resolution,” Local 11 said in its statement Tuesday.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
