Stand Up for ABC-Headstart Students & Workers!

Stand Up for ABC-Headstart Students & Workers!

For the past nine months, workers at ABC-Headstart have been fighting for a fair contract that would provide improvements for themselves and their students. These are workers who provide critical services for some of our city's most financially insecure families - teaching, feeding, and caring for children in poverty all across Rochester. Yet, in spite of Action for a Better Community's stated purpose of "providing opportunities for low-income families to become self-sufficient" as part of their "War on Poverty", many of those that they employ are themselves in poverty. A recent survey of union workers at ABC found that a majority of ABC's employees qualify for social services. As ABC family developer Tomiko Pollocks says, "a lot of our families don't have cars, many are on medicaid. Many of our employees, including myself, are on food stamps." 

Henderson Davis, a food service worker at ABC-Headstart for over 20 years, says that "sometime's I have to choose between paying for food or paying for gas & electric. I certainly don't feel I'm rewarded fairly for everything I do." 

Students, meanwhile, have suffered from what Pollocks refers to as management's "bullying atmosphere" toward workers. "Many employees are afraid to speak up, and it affects their ability to advocate for their students."

As Davis says, "ABC says they want to lift people out of poverty, while we're in poverty. ABC talks about helping the community while we're on food stamps... I'm willing to do whatever it takes to win change."