Isaac Phan Nay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

Nouha Ishaq said when she first started her job preparing food at Simon Fraser University in 2005, coming into work didn’t feel like a fight.

But about five years ago, Ishaq said, the relationship between the campus’s approximately 200 food service workers and their more senior colleagues started to sour.

She said she and her colleagues now tolerate constant verbal abuse and insults from sous-chefs, chefs and managers.

“You feel the whip,” Ishaq said. “You feel the insults when you want to ask for help, when you want to ask for something.”

Ishaq is not alone. There have been at least three official bullying and harassment complaints raised by contract workers at Simon Fraser University since the COVID-19 pandemic, with dozens more workers saying they’ve experienced similar treatment.

A coalition of students, staff and faculty called Contract Worker Justice has been sounding the alarm about poor working conditions and heavy-handed management since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020.

Meanwhile, a series of WorkSafeBC reports The Tyee obtained under freedom of information legislation suggest janitors at Simon Fraser University have faced bullying and harassment at work for years.

But despite repeated calls for the university to take action, workers say little has changed. Their concerns came to a head last year when a woman working as a janitor for Best Service Pros died on the job at SFU’s Burnaby campus.

The cleaning company says it has updated its health and safety measures and created channels for staff to report concerns. The university says it will continue to contract out food and janitorial services. Workers like Ishaq still report hostility from management.

Now, staff and faculty are renewing their call for SFU to bring the workers in-house. That includes Enda Brophy, an associate communications professor at the university and co-founder of Contract Worker Justice.

“Doubling down on contracting out their workforce means that they’re still subject to the troubling management practices,” Brophy said.

“One of the things which is absolutely crystal clear at this point is that contracting out this low-wage work gives tacit permission to contractors to treat the workforce as they see fit.”

Ishaq, who is currently on medical leave, works at the university’s dining commons “Fresh Bowls” station. She’s been a food service employee at the university for 20 years, where she now works for Chartwells Canada, a division of the Canadian arm of the England-based food service contractor Compass Group.

Compass Group, which is valued at US$58 billion, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“We used to have a happy place,” Ishaq said. “I did enjoy the work, and the company was dealing with us differently.”

She said that changed as the university recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, the university committed to being a living-wage employer aiming to ensure all staff earned a wage that covered basic living expenses. Contracted staff, according to the SFU website, are expected to reach living wages though contract negotiations.

Chartwells does not yet pay a living wage.

In 2022, workers bargained for a 17 per cent wage increase over three years. Still, according to their union, Unite Here! Local 40, many workers earned less than $20 per hour as of 2023.

Ishaq said she presently makes $23.58 per hour, with a 50-cent increase expected in May.

As of last November, the Metro Vancouver living wage was $27.85, the research group BC Society for Policy Solutions estimates.

Instead of raising the food service workers’ wages, Ishaq started to see the company hire more bosses, she said.

She described how she often felt insulted by the way sous-chefs spoke to food prep workers.

“Verbal abuse, arguments after arguments. It does bring on a lot of stress to the body, especially when it’s not working in a comfortable space,” she said.

She said to cut costs the company started buying cleaning equipment — like towels, buckets and sanitizers — that didn’t match internal company cleaning protocols. But that led managers to come down hard on workers trying to make do with the equipment on hand.

“You don’t have the essential products for you to do your job the right way,” she said. “But then you get insulted because you’re doing it wrong, yet you’re trying to do your job the best way you know how.”

She added their relationship is further undermined by a language barrier. According to Ishaq, most of her co-workers’ first language is not English.

“When you don’t speak fluent English, you don’t understand their slang, you don’t understand what comes behind the meaning of the word they just threw at you,” she said.

She’s not the first contract worker to bring bullying concerns to light.

Simon Fraser University has long faced criticism for its use of cleaning and food service contractors.

In January 2022, Contract Worker Justice published a report that said employees of cleaning contractor Best Service Pros and food services contractor Chartwells Canada managed excessive workloads, inadequate health and safety protections and a lack of dignity in the workplace.

The report, based on anonymous testimonials of eight janitors and 13 food service workers, said workers reported harassment and discriminatory behaviour by management of both companies.

Workers alleged managers demeaned employees who called in sick, took photos of them without their consent and made fun of their accents. Workers at both companies predominantly speak Punjabi, Tagalog, Hindi, Mandarin or Cantonese as their first language.

Janitors also specifically alleged that managers gave lighter workloads to favoured employees.

Contract Worker Justice presented its report to university directors more than four years ago. The report was endorsed by both Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3338 — which represents the janitors — and Unite Here! Local 40, which represents the food service workers.

Michelle Travis, a spokesperson for Unite Here! Local 40, confirmed the workers’ biggest issues were about the living-wage commitment and management’s treatment of workers.

“There are definitely respect issues and concerns about management cutting hours and doing bargaining unit work,” she said. “There’s definitely frustration with the management and with having to fight this stuff all the time.”

Travis said she could not confirm any specific bullying and harassment complaints.

Shaneza Bacchus, president of CUPE 3338, said in an email that the union can address bullying and harassment concerns through labour management meetings or the grievance process.

“Members are encouraged to submit WorkSafe claims as well, which is outside of the scope of the union,” Bacchus said. “Bullying and harassment would be confidential and resolutions would be discussed with involved parties only.”

Documents obtained by The Tyee show janitors tried to get their issues addressed through complaints to WorkSafeBC.

Through a series of freedom of information requests, The Tyee found a list of WorkSafeBC inspections into Best Service Pros at Simon Fraser University campuses.

Since 2020, WorkSafeBC has been called to inspect the cleaning contractor for bullying and harassment three times. WorkSafeBC has asked the company at least twice to take steps to minimize bullying and harassment and update its relevant policies.

Inspection reports, redacted to protect manager and employee identities, show that in 2020 WorkSafeBC was called to the university’s Burnaby campus after allegations of bullying and harassment. The reports show that this was WorkSafeBC’s second visit to the campus and an inspector told the company to implement an anti-bullying policy that June.

Two years later, WorkSafeBC sent an inspector to Best Service Pros at SFU’s Surrey campus after a third report of bullying and harassment.

The inspector wrote in a Feb. 17, 2022, report that the cleaning contractor’s process to handle bullying and harassment complaints still didn’t meet minimum requirements and the hotline the company told workers it could use to report incidents of bullying and harassment was out of order.

The inspector ordered the company to update its policy.

A spokesperson for Best Service Pros denies that either of these orders was corrective action.

“We take our relationship with our employees very seriously, and we work hard to provide them with avenues through which they can raise their concerns in a safe and respectful manner,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The repeated complaints culminated in calls for Simon Fraser University to cut out the contractors and hire the workers in-house.

After Best Service Pros laid off 23 cleaners in April 2025, Contract Worker Justice met with university administration to request it end its contract with the company, according to Brophy.

“At that meeting, we reiterated all of our findings from the report that this contractor has been a bad actor at Simon Fraser University and that we didn’t want this contractor to be a part of our community,” he said.

Dozens of faculty members also penned a letter to the university president calling for an investigation into bullying and harassment at Best Service Pros and for the university to bring the workers in-house.

But the university did not grant the coalition’s request. Jeff Hodson, a spokesperson for Simon Fraser University, said in an email that several years ago SFU reviewed the benefits and risks of in-house and contracted-out cleaning and food service jobs.

He said management and the university’s board decided to keep outsourcing these services because the university does not have the expertise or capability to provide the services in-house.

“Our expertise is in academics and research,” Hodson said. “Where we do not have expertise, like food services and cleaning, Simon Fraser University has worked with contracted providers.”

Hodson said SFU’s food service and cleaning services have been outsourced since the university’s creation. He added that questions about working conditions should be directed toward employers.

A spokesperson for Best Service Pros said in an emailed statement that since last fall the company has initiated a comprehensive safety audit across its operations, reviewed its use of safety gear, and reinforced safety training and hazard monitoring.

The company said it has also modified workloads and schedules so that employees are not overworked and established clear, confidential ways for staff to raise well-being concerns.

“We have an open-door, non-judgmental policy,” the spokesperson said. “Our managers and executive team are here and always available to our team, without any repercussions or fear of termination.”

But workers and advocates say that commitment isn’t enough. Contract Worker Justice has resumed researching the employees’ working conditions.

“Our relationships with cleaners suggest that not much has changed,” Brophy said.

Brophy said the group is also hearing testimonies from cleaning and dietary workers at hospitals, who in 2021 were brought back in-house after 20 years of privatization.

Brophy said he has learned that having employees and managers accountable to a single employer — like a university, rather than Chartwells and Best Service Pros — improves their relationships and working conditions.

“Once work is brought in-house, the first thing that improves is that management becomes far more humane and respectful,” Brophy said. “There’s a very clear relationship between contracting and problematic disciplinary management practices.”

Meanwhile Ishaq said food service workers are still putting up with bullying and tough working conditions. She said her colleagues avoid asking for help, reporting injuries and crossing sous-chefs, chefs and supervisors.

“The work atmosphere hasn’t been healthy,” she said. “If there was an open relationship with management and workers, you wouldn’t have to be afraid.”

She blames Simon Fraser University for not holding Chartwells accountable and said getting rid of the company could improve her work environment.

“I want to see us become employees of the university,” Ishaq said. “But SFU has turned her back on us.”

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