On March 20, Yosemite National Park was closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic. Shortly after, Aramark, the national park’s concessionaire service since 2016 announced 300 employees would be furloughed. At the time, the good news was that those employees were going to be allowed to stay for free in the subsidized housing they had come to depend on, and why many of them took the job in the first place. On March 27, California Gov. Gavin Newsom established a statewide moratorium on evictions. Last week, Aramark told 90 of those employees that they had until May 21 to vacate their housing. Some of these workers have reportedly been living in the park for more than 10 years. They were evicted.
According to the Fresno Bee, Aramark held a press conference call with those evicted employees last Thursday where they told them that Aramark is “graciously” allowing them until later in the month to leave the premises, as opposed to 72 hours. As the Bee reports, some of these workers feeling the graciousness of Aramark include people without family, seniors, and former foster youth, who—on top of not receiving a paycheck anymore—are looking at becoming part of the unhoused population who knows where. Aramark say that since those people’s housing is subsidized based on their job, these evictions fall outside of the purview of Gov. Newsom’s executive order barring evictions.
Aramark employees pay around $100 a month to live in shared living spaces. The Bee points out that Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks evicted workers in March. That round of evictions included Aramark reportedly threatening arrest of one employee who—while testing negative for COVID-19—was suffering from pneumonia at the time. At that time Aramark said it had not threatened any employees with arrest.
On Monday, KQED reported on how difficult it is for Aramark workers who still have their housing. Specifically, they interviewed 40-year-old James Thompson, who suffers from cerebral palsy. Thompson was unhoused in Sacramento for months before getting the job in Yosemite. Thompson does not qualify for unemployment and the disability Thompson receives is not sufficient to live on, even without rent to be paid.
Food is uniquely expensive for Thompson. He used to rely on the reduced-price meals Aramark served during shifts, but now with the hotels and kitchens closed, that’s not an option. The company is giving their employees $5 vouchers for food, but that money will come out of their paychecks when they start working again. His only option is to wheel himself a mile to the village store, priced for tourists, where a pack of chicken breasts costs $20. Cooking it up in the communal kitchen that’s not adapted for a person in a wheelchair can be dangerous.
With the announcement that 90 employees were being evicted, Thompson feels that his time is up and that creates a very dark question mark for him. According to one worker, Aramark says it plans to “cash out vacation and sick time so evicted employees have money to leave Yosemite.” This, of course, is only helpful to an employee that has accrued, and not used, a ton of vacation time and sick leave.
SF Gate reports that Aramark made a statement about this controversy: To be clear, as it relates to housing, for impacted employees having trouble making new housing arrangements, we will continue to work with and assist them on a case-by-case basis until they are able to do so. We do not plan to force them to leave or vacate their in-park housing without having something new lined up." Aramark does not have the best record when it comes to labor, and what their assistance might really look like is to be taken with a large grain of salt.