City's subsidized meals for poor being diverted to staff making five and six figure salaries

Today on CKNW, Mayor Gregor Robertson said that the City could not possibly find further places to make cuts in the budget as the City was already "goin' bare bones".

Bare bones?  City staff and management continue to fatten up on the heavily subsidized meals the City provides for them daily, even though they make five and six figure salaries.  These meals, meant for the poor, are a cut above a regular cafeteria food; they have a health food orientation.

Carnegie Centre provides these quality subsidized meals daily not only to it's own staff but to staff and managers from the surrounding poverty industry organizations on the Downtown Eastside.  And they provide similar, reportedly even higher quality, subsidized meals to staff and management at the Gathering Place, which is an organization downtown just off Granville St.  This City meal subsidy program provided as a staff and management perk has been going full tilt for decades.  Yet it was never been part of negotiated contracts.

Dan Tetrault, Carnegie's Assistant Director, is estimated to have received a minimum of $20,000 in meal subsidies over the two decades that he's worked at Carnegie -- that's a conservative estimate, based on him eating one subsidized lunch each work day.  Actually, people have seen him ordering up breakfasts, lunches, and dinners on a regular basis for years.  Tetrault is a CUPE member; we know that because he stood on the picket line during the last strike demanding more money and benefits.

These big earners pay no tax when they purchase these meals from Carnegie.  No HST.

For years Carnegie served a full dinner, your choice of meat or vegetarian, for $3.00 every evening at 5 o'clock, except for Saturdays when the meal was $2.00.  They also served a hearty lunch: an entre and a salad for $1.75.  Their salads are good, they have lots of greens in them; sometimes they have potato or beet salad as well.  And they served a daily breakfast for $1.75.  And for years you could get a healthy low-sugar snack for under a dollar: big date squares for eighty cents, muffins for 50 cents, fruit, yogurt, granola made in-house, etc.  They don't serve junk food, except for Blue Sky cola which is a little lower in sugar than regular colas.

Last year they raised the price of all meals by 25 cents at Carnegie.  The meals at the Gathering Place have always been a little more expensive than Carnegie; an evening meal there is $3.75.  They offer a similar range of healthy food as Carnegie.

A few years ago, a worker in the Carnegie cafeteria told me that they prepare 60 meals an evening and when they're gone, they're gone.  Last year, even more of those 60 meals went to yuppies.  The rock bottom prices at Carnegie were advertised in a two page spread about the Carnegie cafeteria in the Province newspaper.  It was like an infomercial, emphasizing the great service this cafeteria was performing by feeding the poor. According to one regular at Carnegie, the kitchen co-ordinator, Catriona Moore, didn’t want the prices published in the Province.  She was ignored.  The regular noticed a rush on “yuppies” after that.  “There are whole tables of them.”  

Whitty avoided mentioning that she helps herself to the meals on top of her over $100,000 salary -- she used to regularly show up for the Tuesday veggie burger with a choice of green or potato salad for $1.75 -- talked to the Province reporter about the helping hand the cafeteria gives to the poor, “They come, we accept them, we feed them.”  Too often she does not feed them.  The poor and homeless are routinely turned away at both Carnegie and the Gathering Place.  The working poor too -- people who get welfare but are allowed to earn a top up by doing odd jobs such as unloading trucks in Strathcona -- are often told the food is gone when they rush down to Carnegie after work.

A homeless guy was telling me the Sunday before last that he had arrived after 5 o’clock and the dinner at the Gathering Place was sold out.  He had been looking forward to the pork dinner “with those little potatoes”.  I asked him if the staff got their plates, and he said they had.

It's time for a two-tiered payment system at Carnegie and the Gathering Place.  People who aren't poor can pay double for a meal.  They will still be getting a bargain.  Try getting the hearty Carnegie lunch at a restaurant downtown for less than $10.  If unionized workers and management in the poverty industry paid more, they could help finance that cafeteria.

A two-tiered payment system would also ensure that the City is not draining customers from private sector  restaurants in the City.  Waves coffee shop next door to Carnegie looks like it's going bankrupt.  It's close to empty much of the time.  They've shrunk their hours.  At Waves, they charge $7 for a burrito or wrap, before tax.  And you don’t get a salad with it.  Waves also competes with the Carnegie coffee shop which sells fresh ground coffee for 60 cents per take-out cup.

Carnegie could model on Quest Food store for the poor just up the street on Hastings, which  requires proof that you are poor.  They make that proof easy to get.  They accept a form letter signed by any staffer at a Welfare office confirming that you qualify for food assistance -- these forms are apparently available from any  front desk receptionist.  Quest will also accept a letter from other organizations that cater to poor people.  They will even take a letter from a Minister.  When you give them your letter, they give you a card that you are expected to show each time you shop.  That system hasn’t stopped a couple of Carnegie workers, a security guard and a former teacher, from relentlessly sneaking in there for the rock bottom prices.  But overall the system seems to work; everybody I know who shops there is dirt poor.

Carnegie wouldn’t have to hire extra staff to issue these cards.  They already have front desk staff who give out membership cards as part of their job description.  They indicate on your membership card whether you are a Senior qualifying for extra services -- I think they put a stamp on the cards of Seniors -- so they could put a stamp on the cards of people who qualify for subsidized meals.  Or give them a card in a different colour.  On the "bare bones" City budget, incidentally, these front desk workers were built a brand new desk with a tall back, like a throne, after we referred on this blog to the “surfer boy” who sits at the front desk looking at the web.  It was built at a time when the City claimed to be looking for efficiencies to save money.

When Mayor Robertson commented today about the City of Vancouver operating on a "bare bones” budget, he was responding to BC Conservative leader John Cummins’ statement that the new gas tax could be avoided if municipalities cut 5% off their budgets and allocated that money to the Evergreen Line.  Robertson called Cummins “ignorant”.  But what Cummins said is not far removed from what the homeless man who missed out on the pork said: the City throws money at Carnegie Centre and the Gathering Place and they don’t seem interested in the fact that staff inside are helping themselves.

Gathering Place: Are staff being hired based on sexual orientation?

Are staff at the Gathering Place being hired based on sexual orientation rather than on their ability to do the job?

I have never set foot in the Gathering Place, a centre downtown which was modelled on Carnegie Centre, and set up by a former Carnegie Director, Diane Mckenzie.  It has more young people amongst its clientele than Carnegie though.  And it caters to many homeless and street people, a population that is predominantly male.

One would think that a primary criterion for getting hired at GP  would be to have a comfort level with the clientele.  But men who use the Centre are resentful about the contempt they're encountering there.   One man who regularly goes to GP  was telling me about a lesbian staffer. "She says "womyn" not "women", and when I talk to her she won't look me in the eye.  She doesn't want to look me in the eye because I'm a man".
 
Another man who uses the GP says that a butch lesbian who works there is gruff and hardened in the way she speaks to people when she's clearing out the dining area.  Like she thinks that getting paid over $20 hr. to work with the poor, is a license to treat them with disrespect.  These complaints aren't coming from women, all are from men.

These guys don't sit around gay bashing.  They don't care if a gay or lesbian gets hired, as long as they're qualified.  But they believe that the over representation of gays and lesbians on staff at GP is an indication that somebody is getting their friends hired.  They listed off all of the employees who were lesbian or gay.  One guy explained that to get a job with a City of Vancouver, people used to say that you had to have a relative working there.  Now it seems as if your sexual orientation can get your foot in the door.  (Having a relative can still help though.  Skip Everall at Carnegie reportedly hired his son to work under him.)

Hiring based on sexual orientation rather than merit damaged Ray Cam Community Centre when it opened it's doors years ago to cater to the youth in the social housing next door, a real ghetto.  The staff was predominantly white lesbians, most of whom had terrible people skills.  They were supposed to be offering  role modelling to the youth, many of whom were native, hispanic, and black males.  A few years later, I ran into a guy who used to lift weights there and he told me how great it was at Ray Cam now and I should drop by.  I told him that I had long ago stopped going there because the lesbians treated me like I was subhuman.  He knew instantly what I was talking about and said, "Oh, they got rid of that group".

I'm wondering if the City has shifted it's old Ray Cam hiring practices to the GP.  These practices are one step removed from a casting couch.

One thing that all the men sitting talking to me about GP agreed on was that, "The staff there have eeeeeasy jobs."  One guy qualified that assessment by noting that the woman who works in the laundry does work for her pay.  Anyone can take their laundry there and get it done for free.

One thing I noticed when sitting with these guys is that they feel the same powerlessness at GP as people at Carnegie Centre.  They knew that taking any kind of stand in the face of staff mistreatment would get them  nowhere because CUPE -- Cover Up for Poor Employees -- would cover asses.  And these guys don't read blogs.