No decision will be made on Dartmouth Dining Services employee cutbacks until the end of Summer term at the earliest, Associate Director of DDS Tucker Rossiter told union employees at a meeting yesterday afternoon.
Although no specific cuts have been decided, the ad hoc committee charged with determining the future of DDS plans to distribute a letter to all students describing the new meal plan to be implemented at the beginning of Fall term.
The letter will be delivered to Hinman boxes tomorrow or early next week, and it will detail only a temporary solution to DDS's financial woes, Committee member Rachel Bogardus '98 said.
Rossiter, also a member of the committee, met with Local 560 Union President Earl Sweet and union members yesterday to brace them for the possibility of lay-offs and to inform them of the committee's decision to delay making cuts to DDS.
Sweet said the meeting did nothing to ease the fears of union members, who will now have to spend another three to four months worrying about their job security. He said the employees were expecting an announcement of a final decision on DDS' future at yesterday's meeting.
Union employees are also dissatisfied with the amount of input they have been allowed in DDS decisions both past and present, Sweet said.
Employees' suggestions of ways for DDS to save money have gone largely ignored and no union representatives are members of the committee that will ultimately decide the fate of DDS, he said.
Those in attendance at yesterday's meeting spoke about increasing union involvement in the decision-making process, though no provisions have been made.
Sweet said the union will ultimately have to decide which employees will lose their jobs, starting with those of least seniority. Those laid off from DDS are expected to be given priority for other College job openings.
Rossiter said delaying the decision protects the employees with lowest seniority because cutbacks may occur through attrition rather than layoffs.
DDS employees are at a loss for how to deal with the news, since it brings no real prediction of their future, Sweet said. He said students may not have thought about the impact their complaints about DDS would have, especially when voting in the Student Assembly-sponsored referendum two weeks ago.
"Some students looked at it as an $800 thing," he said. "It's a lot more devastating than that."
