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At 8 a.m., GW students, parking garage employees and union organizers, undaunted by freezing rain, rallied in front of a Colonial Parking garage on 19th and G streets and marched to the Elliott School to urge GW to sever its ties with the parking company.
Marchers, holding aloft union placards and passing out flyers, peacefully confronted some members of the Board of Trustees. The 35-person board met Friday morning to approve a tuition increase and evaluate GW's financial health (See "Board passes 5 percent tuition hike").
Several students from GW's Progressive Student Union and Jewish Progressive Political Association participated in the demonstration, using a bullhorn to highlight what they said were substandard wages and health benefits given to Colonial Parking employees.
"We want to show GW that students know and students care about what is going on," said senior Allie Robbins of the Progressive Student Union.
Since Colonial Parking garages operate in GW-owned buildings at 2000 Pennsylvania Ave. and 2100 Pennsylvania Ave., protesters said the University is obligated to ensure workers' rights by either abandoning its business partnership with the company or forcing it to change its practices.
"We are demanding that GW do business with companies that act responsibility," said Ann Swinburn, a research analyst with the Hotel Employee Restaurant Employee Local 27 Parking & Service Workers' Union.
"What matters is GW is giving its money to a company that is paying workers poverty wages with high-cost health care and not respecting the right to organize," she added.
University officials, meeting on the Elliott School's seventh floor at the trustees meeting, said GW would not distance itself from Colonial Parking.
"Colonial Parking is a tenant of the University, so it's like saying that we have some duty to run the parking lots," said GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, holding a lime green flyer that a protester gave him.
The University's relationship with Colonial Parking, which operates 60 garages around the country, extends back two generations.
