Worker shortages limit services in dining areas, on Link buses

Across both campuses, the number of students employed on campus has decreased by more than 300 students in two years, according to Angie Mareck, head of student employment.

In recent years, dining services have never filled every single student employment position, but this year, the understaffing of dining services has risen to new levels. Across both campuses, shortages have been seen in both student and non-student dining service workers.

Dining centers have been forced to adjust their hours, stations unexpectedly close, and the variety of foods available has been limited.

Dining services start recruiting and hiring over the summer. During the hiring process, they simply weren’t getting the same volume of applications as they normally do, according to Kim Poganski, director of culinary services at CSB.

Dining services were not alone in this issue­ —custodial, grounds crew, fine arts programming and other essential services on campus all experienced a lack of applicants, and as a result, a lack of workers.

Dining services made some adjustments and started the year relatively normal, but they quickly determined that the status quo wasn’t sustainable.

“We got to the point where we weren’t seeing the ability to hire staff and we said, you know what, we need to pause and ask, ‘what changes can we make that will affect our students the least but will give some reprieve to the employees that work in culinary?’” Poganski said.

The appropriate adjustments included shifting the hours of Gorecki, the Refectory, Sexton and McGlynn’s and using disposable dishware to reduce the need for back-of-house staff.

Every week, Gorecki Dining Hall is missing 120 student work hours, McGlynn’s is missing 75 student work hours and events and catering are both missing 36 student work hours. On top of that, Culinary Services have nine vacant non-student roles, totaling 160 hours a week missing.

At SJU, Director of Dining Janet Despard indicated that dining services has approximately 25 vacant student and full-time positions. Student managers, interns and full-time staff work extra hours to compensate for these vacancies.

“When someone doesn’t show up or you’re understaffed, the first people that are called in are interns,” said Andy Goldsmith, a nutrition intern and supervisor at the Reef. “I have to keep my phone on me because… it’s likely that someone might try and call me in.”

Goldsmith said that he would typically work around 14 hours a week in a normal year. Now, he works up to 25 hours. Sexton student manager Jared Klein has also seen his workload jump from his usual six hours to up to 15 or 20 hours.

Customer service, cleanliness, attention to detail and last-minute shutdowns of stations have all been noticed.

“We take such pride in this, so it’s hard as staff to see that,” Poganski said.

At the Reef, the international bar has rarely been open, and the omelet bar is yet to return after its COVID- induced hiatus. Sexton reduced its hours for the burrito bar, and different services like the sub line depend on the number of staff available.

“Just be patient with us,” Klein said. “We’re trying our best. We’re working long hours and sacrificing a little bit of homework time. It also frustrates me to come in and not see the sub line open, because I want a sub that day. So, I feel the exact same way at certain times as [students] do.”

It is unclear what exactly is the root cause of the shortage. This issue was not as serious last year, even with greater COVID restrictions.

“I think if I had the answer to that, we’d be fully staffed,” Despard said. “There’s certainly a lot of news and information about it. My feeling is that this is what it was like getting into the pandemic, and everything seemed like it just changed.”

In order to combat the labor shortage, discussions about raising wages and including incentives to reward students and staff have been brought up. It’s unknown if any adjustments will even help. Other colleges and universities have taken initiatives to increase wages with little success in boosting workforce student numbers.

“So many companies and businesses are struggling with the same thing. We are not unique,” said Carmen Welinski, the associate director of culinary services at CSB.

The trend seems to be the same at CSB/SJU—students don’t seem to be too concerned about pay. In a survey performed by the office of student employment, the most common reason that students gave for not working was the desire to focus on school and extracurricular activities.

The staff shortage problem doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Since Monday, Gorecki Dining Center lost another 30 hours a week of student shifts.

“Right now, there are no applications coming in…in two weeks we’ll have to look to make some changes if we can’t fill those lost positions,” said Welinski.

The dining service employees have adapted by taking more hours, coming in early, staying late or working in positions they don’t typically. Some days, employees that work catering shifts are needed in the dining halls.

“The people that we have are incredibly hard working,” Despard said. “They’re dedicated; they’re coming in; they’re working some extra shifts and they have been working incredibly hard. They’re very committed to taking care and serving others, and I could not be more proud of them.”