Thousands of students, faculty and staff will return to Ohio University March 26 to begin Spring Quarter — but 20 residential dining employees won’t be coming back with them.
A total of 20 bargaining unit employees received layoff notices Wednesday, after OU Human Resources and Culinary Services were unable to reach an agreement with the AFSCME Local 1699 union.
The layoffs are a result of a decreased need for work while Nelson Dining Hall is closed for renovations during Spring Quarter and the summer, according to a university news release.
Late last summer, union leadership and Culinary Services discussed a memorandum of understanding, which the union voted down 60 to 31.
University officials said the memorandum would have prevented a reduction in force and allowed for increased flexibility in Culinary Services.
John Dillon, president of AFSCME Local 1699, said that memorandum would not have been as effective as the university claimed and a memorandum of understanding dealing specifically with the Nelson Dining Hall closure was not discussed until two weeks ago.
“They were claiming that (the August memorandum) was greater and grander than what it was,” Dillon said.
Dillon said Culinary Services and Human Resources waited too long to begin negotiating the layoffs for Nelson’s closure this month.
“They sat on their thumbs and they waited until two weeks ago to come up with this plan,” he said.
University and union leadership drafted the most recent memorandum Feb. 22. It proposed a seasonal layoff for Spring Quarter, during which employees would continue to receive benefits (including tuition, health care and retirement) but no pay, similar to OU’s policy for workers during the summer.
If the memorandum had been accepted by the union membership, OU would not have opposed applications for unemployment benefits by the “laid off” employees. The employees would have been expected to return to work Aug. 20.
On Feb. 27, the union advised the university that the bargaining unit employees in Dining Services had rejected the memorandum. On March 6, during a union meeting, the full membership voted it down as well, according to the news release.
Culinary Services employees that are part of the bargaining unit rejected the memorandum in part because of questions of stability in the department, Dillon said.
“Part of the concern is that … this could have just been putting off the inevitable because of the uncertainty in Dining Services,” he said. “There’s nothing stable about Dining Services, and that’s due to the caliber of management there — that’s just the way they do business.”
A group of employees in Nelson declined to comment on the layoff notices.
Dillon added that up to 40 employees could be affected because of the “bumping process.”
The “bumping process” is common in collective bargaining, during which senior employees receiving layoffs can take the job of less senior employees rather than being laid off.
“We regret that an agreement that was acceptable to both parties could not be reached,” said Linda Lonsinger, chief human resource officer, in the news release. “We hope to recall the employees in the fall when Nelson Dining Hall is reopened.”
OU officials in the Human Resources and Culinary Services departments were not available for comment in person or on the phone.
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