More than 420,000 food service workers are employed in school cafeterias across the country. They play a critical role in ensuring food safety, good nutrition and a healthy, stable learning environment for millions of children. Food service workers are the lowest paid workers in our children's schools, but even among this poorly compensated group there exists a two-tier system where most contract food service workers receive significantly less in wages and benefits than those directly employed by school districts.

More than 50,000 school food service workers today are employed by private food service management companies, which are hired by state and local school districts. Thousands of them are living at or below the poverty level. Many do not have access to affordable health insurance or paid sick leave, which forces them to choose between losing a day's pay and coming to work sick.

These workers play a pivotal role in ensuring our children's nutrition, and yet insufficient training and pay and benefits leads to high turnover in the industry, negatively impacting the level of service being provided to our children in school cafeterias around the country.

The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act gives the Secretary of Agriculture broad authority to maintain the integrity of the programs and issue guidelines and regulations for the implementing agency. The Act also gives the secretary broad authority to regulate the private food service management contracts entered into by school districts, but fails to specify standards by which to evaluate or regulate these contracts.

Because the Act currently fails to define labor standards, thousands of contracted food service workers across America are uninsured or impoverished, with no other option but to enroll in public health and public assistance programs.

We believe the Act should, therefore, be amended to include:

• Paid Sick Leave: At a time when influenza strains are capable of shutting down schools for days and even weeks, we need to be sure that every measure is being taken to protect our children's health while they're at school. Providing paid sick leave to food service workers employed by school districts directly or by contract, would help prevent workers who are ill from nonetheless coming to work and handling our children's food.


• A Food Service Workforce Development Pilot Program: This pilot program would provide funding in qualifying states to train contracted food service workers through qualified training programs, as well as increase contracted food service workers' wages and benefits to the federal Service Contract Act standards States would qualify for the pilot program by amending their state model contracts to include standards for worker training and protections.