CAS Workers Disgruntled, Consider Strike Over Current Working Conditions and Pay

Recently, SUNY Geneseo dining halls have been critically understaffed. This shortage of employees has caused challenges for the staff that have led to such dissatisfaction with Campus Auxiliary Services (CAS) that employees are now considering striking.

“Very late in August,” said CAS Executive Director Mat Felthousen in a presentation at the Student Association meeting on September 15, “about a week or two before classes started, we discovered that people we were expecting to come back did not.”

According to Pam Connor, the Associate Executive Director and Business Officer for CAS, “We’re down full-time employees, we’re trying to cover with some students shifts and vice versa.”

One SUNY Geneseo student who works for CAS described their average day at work, saying, “They’re sending us to various locations throughout the night. This year it is very different because [CAS Managers] are like, ‘I need you guys to work extra on the weekend.’ They’re reaching out to us personally if they need help, which is totally not acceptable.”

Another student CAS worker explained, “The workload has increasingly fallen upon student workers who have signed up for shifts. The whole system relies on student workers.”

“At least two employees now do the work that four student employees would have been doing last year,” said a student CAS worker.

One student worker said, “My RJ experience was actually fun for the first semester. I really did like my job, and it wasn't hard at all… At the time I felt like the $12.50 I was getting paid, it made sense.”

Meanwhile, student workers claim that the critically low amounts of staff have caused food safety issues.

One student said, “[Dining halls are] self-serve, and that's a way to cut back on [employees], but that really increases the cross-contamination. Like everything, everything is constantly cross-contaminated.”

“I think we've seen the difference between the quality of the food between this year and last year. I think a lot of it is the result of talented well qualified staff leaving,” said a student worker.

According to Felthousen, “We have reinvigorated our employee referral program. So, paying a small amount of money to a current employee if they make a referral, and that referral ends up being a success.”

“We have gone to new job fair opportunities that we haven’t attended in the past,” said Felthousen. “We have had quite a bit of traffic at those events. So, we're trying to use as many different channels as possible or methods of outreach because we recognize that everyone consumes information in a different way and different time. So, we're looking to cast our net further than we would.”

“We have openings virtually at every level. So, there are a lot of opportunities, depending on someone's abilities or their experience, chances are you have something that would be a fit [for a prospective employee],” said Felthousen.

One student worker says, “I literally sat there and cried the other day because I knew that I would be working with two people, two people, to get a total of $50.”

“Students are currently at minimum wage,” says Felthousen. “However, that [wage increase] is something I'm looking at, and hopefully I will have more to share on that in a future day.”

While many student CAS workers agree that a wage increase would be appropriate, that does not resolve all their concerns.

“We made a poll,” says a group of student CAS workers. “The number one grievance as an employee was low wages. The number two grievance was staffing shortages. Number three was inflexible hours. The next question was ‘Do you want to help organize a strike?’ Thirty percent said they would organize a strike, fifty percent said they would participate if a strike was called. That’s eighty percent of employees who said they would participate if we said ‘you know what, none of us are going in.’”

When asked about the impact a strike would have on the student body, student workers said, “That's the reason that we haven't pressed [striking] further—I feel like if we did strike, I mean, we eat here too, you know.”

“I also think that, at some point, it's no longer our highest priority to help the students short term, because long term it will be very helpful for them if we do this,” said one student worker. “We’ll have jobs available for you and you'll have food that you can actually eat without worrying about the quality of it, or whether or not you'll get food poisoning.”

Felthousen addressed the strike, saying “The biggest concern I would have, or a big concern that I would have would be the impact [on] the students that we're trying to serve. At a time where we're all working towards a common goal of getting back to normal, having things go back to the way they were two years ago… a strike exacerbates the short staffing situation that we're currently under. So, we would be less able to deliver on what we are currently delivering.”

“The reality is that the food system requires student workers, especially at [Red Jacket Dining Hall]. It requires student workers and leans on student workers,” said one student worker. “If we decide not to show up because they don't have enough full-time workers, they will have to shut down.”

“What they're doing right now is exactly what they want to do,” said a student employee. “If they wanted to do something different, they would do something different, right? This is their game plan for this semester. They know last semester didn't go well for them financially, so the new game plan is [hurting] us, the student employees.”

“We care,” said Felthousen. “We recognize that… the past few years [has] not done what many of us expected or signed up for necessarily. We're facing challenges that, unfortunately, are not unique to us. And we are nevertheless committed to overcoming those challenges and providing what everybody expects of us.”

According to Felthousen, feedback is welcome and appreciated. If you would like to send your feedback or ask questions, email cas@geneseo.edu.