The College raised salaries for incoming Dining Services employees this summer, filling almost all of the department’s vacancies and reaching the highest staffing levels since 2019. Nevertheless, longtime employees of Dining Services reported dissatisfaction in a Record survey, voicing frustration about overwhelming workloads and a lack of pay significantly higher than that of newer coworkers.
The College increased the minimum starting wage by $5 per hour for incoming cooks, by $3 per hour for incoming snack bar attendants, by $2 per hour for incoming cooks’ assistants, and by $1 per hour for incoming prep service attendants.
The College finalized its fiscal year 2024 (FY24) budget in the spring, but around 20 positions at a variety of levels in Dining Services remained vacant at the start of the summer. In August, Director of Dining Services Temesgen Araya, Provost Eiko Maruko Siniawer ’97, and Vice President for Finance and Operations Mike Wagner elected to raise the pay of the open positions to make them more attractive to prospective employees.
In an interview with the Record, Araya explained that over the years, the College has raised salaries for all returning faculty and staff to keep pace with inflation. For FY24, for example, faculty and staff received wage increases of $500 and 4 percent of their previous salary. But the salaries offered to new staff members have not increased in tandem with wages of returning employees.
After elevating wages for incoming workers, the College also increased the salaries of returning staff members to at least the middle of the updated pay range for new employees. Eighty percent of returning employees received a raise through this mechanism.
Wagner told the Record that while alterations to the budget are infrequent, the numerous vacancies necessitated action outside of the usual budgeting cycle. “We couldn’t go into this year with those 20 positions vacant,” he said. “The budget can accommodate the kind of adjustment that we needed to do.”
This year, Araya said, fewer vacancies have led to a more evenly distributed workload and consistent morale boost. “You’d go into the school year in the past, and you’re coming in with high morale, and you hit a brick wall, and it’s hard to keep going,” he said.
Now, however, dining “feels like more than a job,” he said. “That’s what I see walking through the dining halls and saying hello to the staff. You just feel that energy, and you see it come through in the food.”
However, Dining Services staff painted a starkly different picture of workload and morale in a Record survey sent to 51 employees and conducted anonymously to allow respondents to speak freely about their workplace.
Out of 12 respondents — 11 of whom are returning employees — none said morale had improved this year, and none said their workload had lightened. Many respondents specifically expressed that they felt their current salaries relative to those of new employees did not reflect their years of employment at the College.
In some cases, veteran employees may earn the same or even less than their new colleagues. The original FY24 budget included an increase in shift differentials, or bonus pay offered to employees working evening, weekend, and overnight shifts, which are considered less desirable. Due to these changes, a cook’s assistant working a weekend overnight shift could receive an hourly wage of up to $24.55 per hour, for example, which is more than the minimum salary of $24 per hour for a cook in a more senior position.
“As a long-term employee, giving the new employees a huge pay increase and not including the veteran employees only created animosity,” wrote an employee who has worked in Dining Services for over a decade. “Who do they think trained these people? … In my opinion, they should have given the long-term employees the raise and based their pay on their ability and knowledge of the job.”
“All this has done is make people angry,” the respondent concluded.
“Being here for 15 years plus [and] seeing all the new employees see substantial raises gives a bad taste to the employees who have been here [and] received no compensation, causing [us to] question if our longevity is worth it,” another employee wrote. Multiple respondents added that older employees must now work harder and longer to compensate for newer employees’ lack of experience at the College.
Araya acknowledged the discrepancy in the satisfaction of his staff, noting that wages for new hires do not usually lag far behind those of more senior employees. “Individuals who’ve been with the institution [for longer] have expressed that they wish they received an acknowledgement of their tenure here,” he said. “The most senior staff members have a higher rate — but I’m not boasting that it is incredibly different.”
Araya also acknowledged that the shift differentials primarily benefited newer employees and thus also could have contributed to dissatisfaction among workers who have been at the College for longer.
Though Dining Services staff have reported feeling more inundated, returning students have expressed increased satisfaction with Dining Services. In a Record survey, 37 of 82 students — or 45 percent of respondents — reported an increase in overall satisfaction, while 35 percent said their satisfaction had remained the same and 9 percent expressed decreased satisfaction with dining overall. 57 percent of respondents, or 47 students, reported an improvement in food quality, whereas just 7 percent reported a decline.
Araya attributed increased satisfaction with dining hall food to both the reduction of vacancies and improved supply chain issues. “We’re not paying more for food — it’s just that we’re able to execute what we design better because of staffing [and] supply chains,” he said.
Araya also said he believed time would help resolve the issues contributing to frustration among his staff. “Even when [current employees] were hired, it took a while for them to get acclimated to this style of cooking compared to a restaurant — so one may be frustrated that [new hires] are coming in at a closer rate [to] them, but they’re going to get to that to the level [of efficiency] that our current staff are at,” he said.
