Matt Brower has been an employee of Campus Dining at Notre Dame for 12 years, running Decio Café for the past eight years. Everything about the restaurant is familiar to him: the recipes, the faces and the steady flow of students. This year, however, he worries it will look a little different for him and the rest of the University’s dining staff.
In response to increased taxes on university endowments and uncertainty about federal funding under the Trump administration, Notre Dame has implemented a hiring freeze, as a number of universities across the country have also done.
A June statement by the University’s executive officers, including University President Fr. Robert Dowd, announced that a hiring freeze that began in March would continue indefinitely with rare exceptions. “As is true currently, there will be an exception process to fill critical positions, but such exceptions will be limited,” the message read.
Brower and other Campus Dining employees discussed how their jobs have been impacted by the freeze.
“We just work harder and have more overtime,” Brower said. “As long as we have the overtime, we get the stuff done. There are other units that don’t allow any overtime at all, and that’s really making it difficult.”
Workers at small on-campus restaurants shared they have struggled to manage workloads during shifts.
“Sometimes we have only two people back there, when normally we’d have around four,” Alex Bittar, a senior who has been working for Au Bon Pain for the past three years, said. “When we don’t have enough people, we might need to turn off the drinks or certain sandwiches, just to have the workload be enough for us,” he added, referring to workers’ ability to limit menu options on the GrubHub app and kiosks.
Due to the hiring freeze, Brower shared that Campus Dining locations can typically only hire temporary workers.
“The only people that can be hired in Campus Dining right now are mostly the on-call temps. They have no benefits, they have no guaranteed hours, the lowest pay structure,” Brower said. “But it’s really difficult to hire people for those jobs.”
Brower says that student workers are needed now more than ever to cover the gaps that can’t be filled by full time workers. This, however, has been a challenge, when Campus Dining has also been reducing student benefits in multiple locations.
“When I’ve worked past semesters we used to have different incentives. For every two hours worked we’d get either a meal or four ABP points, which were essentially dollars we could use at ABP or ask our manager to use to get merch at the bookstore.” Bittar said. “That went away this year to these new incentives, where a student only gets a full meal after a four-hour minimum shift. Almost as if they downgraded.”
Senior Tess Majkut quit her job at ABP because of these reduced benefits.
“They stopped doing the ABP points, which was the free money you could use there,” Majkut said. “So what’s the point?”
The reduced benefits were also a cause for concern for Brower.
“They’re reducing their benefits,” he said. “And pushing that initiative at this time is the absolute worst way to deal with the hiring freeze.”
Brower said that Decio Café has been lucky enough to still be able to provide a free meal for student workers regardless of the length of shift.
“If they force us to say that we can’t feed student workers unless they work four hours, then they’re not going to work here anymore, and that’s really going to hurt,” Brower said.
North Dining Hall cleaning employee Samantha Marin hopes to attract more student workers as well.
“Maybe people think it’s really degrading to work at a dining room, but it’s not. And if you want a better dining room, you know, maybe you could help out if you’re looking for extra money too,” Marin said. “We’re super understaffed.”
Marin says she feels the everyday struggles of running a dining hall with fewer workers.
“My job is just to clean the tables and fill napkins, and even something simple as that ... with just two people cleaning, is kind of hard,” Marin said.
North Dining Hall closing manager DeRhon Pines says that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for workers at NDH.
“There has been a hiring freeze, but since [the University has named workers at North] essential employees, they have allowed us to have more workers,” Pines said.
Pines said the worst of the hiring freeze for NDH was last semester, but this year has seen positive growth due to the essential employee determination.
“Last month we hired eight to nine people, which is huge for us,” Pines said.
It was unclear whether or not the hiring freeze exemption has been extended to South Dining Hall. Campus Dining and the University declined a request to clarify the terms of the hiring freeze.
Ashley Kwist, who has been working at South Dining Hall for the past three years, says SDH has experienced similar issues, exacerbated by the renovation of the nearly century-old building.
“With the remodeling, it’s a lot harder on the people that are here, because they’re not allowed to hire full time. They’re only allowed to hire temporary,” Kwist said.
“I feel like if they give the temporary people benefits that we get to have, they would work more,” Kwist said. “A lot of them are dropping working here because they don’t get benefits.”
Pines says that despite these difficulties, Campus Dining workers have been working to maintain the quality of service for students.
“We do it for the students. That’s our number one priority,” Pines said. “It’s like, yeah, we are short in some ways, but the reason why we are trying as staff to improve is student experience, so there is no lack in service.”
In a statement to The Observer, University spokesperson Erin Blasko wrote, “While circumstances require us to be thoughtful about our spending, we are fully committed to delivering a level of service commensurate with expectations thanks to the hard work of our dedicated staff.”
