Opinion

This week, I will do my best to outline the story of an employee working for the International House at UC Berkeley. According to this individual, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect his job, certain I-House practices — including hiring contracted workers and allowing less time to complete a standard workload — have led him to feel harassed at work.

I will strive to clarify which aspects of this story have been confirmed while also including an administrative perspective.

While I-House is known to many on campus for its commanding views of the bay and colorful resident population, its employment practices have garnered attention lately from community members, local media and union representatives.

During the spring of 2011, I-House workers and members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 began demonstrating and wearing stickers stating “NO sub-contracting” in objection to I-House’s practice of filling empty positions with temporary contracted employees.

In April, after union members distributed flyers outlining their grievances, I-House management responded by calling a meeting to “discuss dining services or related issues.” At the meeting, I-House Executive Director Martin Brennan and Shirley Spiller, the house’s chief financial officer, responded to questions and outlined a plan to fill vacancies among the dining service staff, while also justifying the occasional use of contracted employees.

Less than two weeks later, employees and union members were again picketing outside I-House, declaring that they were overworked and demanding that more career employees be hired.

According to some staff members at I-House, the situation has not changed. In fact, some say it has gotten worse.

The individual I spoke to has worked in the I-House kitchen for more than 20 years, regularly serving about 600 people three meals a day. Often, he says he must spend time training contracted employees who are brought in to temporarily fill vacancies on the kitchen staff.

“They don’t know anything — they are just given the menus (and told) ‘Go! Cook!’ … There is nobody to train them — it makes it hard for assistant cooks, who had to teach (contracted employees) how to cook,” he said. “When the assistant cook says, ‘OK, it’s your job to cook, you are responsible,’ the (contracted employee) answers back, ‘I’m not responsible — I’m only here temporarily.’”

This employee says he is frustrated by having to train a different worker each week and at having to search for misplaced ingredients and equipment parts that contracted workers lose or break.

In addition to these stresses, the employee said he has just been informed that he must accomplish his daily tasks in a fraction of the time normally required as part of an administrative push for efficiency.

“It seems unfair. I go for 100 percent — like a machine. I slice all the vegetables, and they still ask me for more work.”

This pressure took a toll, and he sought medical help — he said he sees a doctor for stress and receives pills to help him sleep.

Maricruz Manzanarez, a former union organizer, recalled the day this employee came into the union offices in tears, worried about his job.

Ramon Pizano, a senior food service worker at I-House, corroborated this employee’s story.

Although few administrators responded to requests for comment,  Brennan said in an email that I-House management “very much (values its) employees and their work.”

He added that the inconsistency of temporary workers is “not ideal” and that contracted staff cover employees’ occasional absences and briefly fill open positions, supplementing the career dining services workforce.

In response to questions about whether or not the kitchen would eventually be staffed by career employees alone, Brennan stated that after management filled openings on the cooking staff, they would review “overall staffing and evaluate additional staffing requirements.” In the time since Brennan and Spiller outlined their hiring intentions in the meeting last semester, two assistant cook positions and one chef position remain open.

The story included here is by no means the only example of alleged hardships that I-House employees say they have encountered in the course of their work. This case, and others like it, create a concerning image.

I invite administrators and others to participate in this conversation, with the guarantee that their responses will be given the same fair treatment as this employee’s story. My hope is that by focusing unfalteringly on these issues, a satisfactory resolution will ultimately be reached.

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