This month, staffing shortages at Pomona College dining halls led to the temporary closure of the Coop Fountain. Dining management claims these shortages are the result of excessive staff call-outs, but workers allege that the effects of these shortages have been exacerbated by mismanagement.
Pomona students were first made aware of the effect of these staffing shortages on Nov. 11, when they received an email that Frary Dining Hall would be closed the next day for Sunday breakfast and brunch due to a lack of sufficient staff.
In the email, Jose Martinez, general manager of dining services, told students that the Coop Fountain would also be closed during the following week “to ensure the dining halls [were] sufficiently staffed.”
Last Thursday, Martinez sent another email to Pomona students confirming that the Coop would be closed for the rest of the semester.
Vincent Gamalinda, a cook at Frank Dining Hall who has worked at Pomona for thirteen years, commented on the impact of staffing shortages on campus.
“We don’t even have a dishwasher to wash dishes at Frank in the evening,” he said. “So we use paper plates.”
Edward Mac, who normally works at Café 47, also expressed frustration with these staffing shortages. Mac has previously been denied vacation time because of them.
The contract between Pomona and UNITE HERE! Local 11, the union that represents Pomona’s dining workers, states that workers accrue paid vacation time for their amount of hours worked. This vacation time can range from around seven to 14 hours a month, depending on how long workers have been at the college.
Mac explained that he has reached the maximum amount of accrued vacation time, meaning that if he doesn’t take time off of work, he won’t accrue any more hours.
“I’ll be losing money at that point,” he said.
In response to concerns about vacation time, Martinez explained that vacation requests are sometimes denied when staffing levels do not meet the needs of the college community, as has been the case this past month. However, he suggested that this denial was rare, saying the college approves an average of 92 percent of requests for vacation time.
Still, some workers like Mac have continued to express frustration with how management has handled recent staffing shortages.
On Nov. 13, the day after Martinez announced closures at Frary and the Coop, Mac was moved from his normal position at Café 47 to Frank to help cover its vacant positions. He felt that management was unwilling to post vacant positions that might be filled by workers incurring overtime, resulting in this staffing shortage and his move.
According to the union’s contract with the college, if management knows at least eight hours in advance that a position will be vacant, they must post the position on the college’s scheduling system. Employees can then bid on taking the shift, which could potentially result in going into overtime for the week.
Mac alleges that, following recent vacancies, management has failed to follow this procedure, thereby violating this contract.
“Basically, Pomona has said, ‘Instead of posting these positions and following the contract, we’re just going to close the units,’” Mac said. “They know every single time they post the position, somebody is most likely going to incur overtime, and that’s a problem for Pomona’s budget.”
When asked whether management notified workers about the vacancies at Frank on Nov. 13, Martinez stated that management had not violated the contract between Pomona and the union.
“We follow the guidelines outlined in the collective bargaining agreement,” he said in an email to TSL.
However, some workers felt otherwise, echoing Mac’s frustrations with how management handles overtime.
“We have a serious problem with the overtime,” said Shireen Aslan, a Frary worker. “They don’t want to give us overtime.”
Martinez said he was not aware of claims that closing the Coop and re-assigning workers in response to staffing shortages was an attempt to prevent workers from incurring overtime. Rather, he said that the staffing shortages were the result of a higher-than-normal rate of staff calling out of work.
“The absences we are experiencing revolve around family emergencies, illness…and various types of leave of absence,” Martinez said.
Martinez cited Nov. 12, the day that Frary was closed, as an example. According to Martinez, there were 14 vacant positions at both Frank and Frary, including cooks, cashiers, bakers and custodial workers.
“We experienced an extremely high rate of call-outs on Nov. 12, to the point where we could not safely open both dining halls,” he said.
Pomona dining hall employees are not the only ones who have expressed concern regarding recent staffing shortages; students have begun to take note as well.
This Thursday, the Claremont Student & Worker Alliance (CSWA) released an Instagram post asking students to contact college administration and urge them to re-open the Coop. CSWA created an email template addressed to Martinez and Robert Robinson, assistant vice president of facilities and campus services, among others.
Brianna Huynh PO ’24, a member of CSWA’s core committee, said the email template is an attempt to stand in solidarity with workers. Huynh said that she is frustrated about what she feels is a lack of communication between administration and students about the closures.
“We were initially as students only told that the Coop would be closed for a week, and now it seems like it’s going to be closed for the rest of the semester,” Huynh said. “We’re hoping that this email template, in a larger campaign of communication with administration, will change the ways in which admin treats student opinion.”
Enoch Kim contributed reporting.
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