The university does not have enough food service workers to staff its campus; restaurants in the shiny new Unthank Hall remain closed, and wait times are often over an hour. UO regards this as a labor shortage and attempts to bolster recruitment with bonuses, but this is an obfuscation from the truth: This is a wage shortage. Workers, on campus or otherwise, are financially unable and unwilling to toil under poverty pay that undervalues their labor. UO as an institution has enough money to finance a $219 million dollar renovation of campus but somehow not enough to entice broke college students to serve pizza.

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UO is a microcosm of nationwide struggles for workers rights and higher wages that are often portrayed in the media as a labor shortage. This framing shifts the blame for a shortage onto the worker and neglects the true solution: Pay people more. If a company cannot attract or keep its labor force, it is not because the composition of the average worker has unknowably changed; it’s because the employer does not pay enough.
In September, 3% of all employed workers — 4.4 million Americans — quit their jobs. In response, employers have tried to attract their workforce back with minimally increased pay. October’s average hourly earnings jumped 4.9% over the previous year. Yet this fails to even meet inflation which grew 6.2% in the same time. Effectively, hourly wage earners face a pay cut to continue working.
Hourly campus wage grew from $12.75 to $13.25 this year –– yet it is still not enough during an ongoing pandemic where good jobs are needed to support students as prices increase on all goods.
If we take UO at its word that its collegiate purpose is to prepare students for future employment, then it is preparing its current employees to be underpaid, undersupported and underappreciated.

Miles Slayton, an employee of the Pacific Northwest Market in Unthank, is adamant that an increased wage is necessary for employees.
“Not only a wage which may ensure our survival, but one which would allow us to thrive through our college years,” Slayton said. “To work for less is not only undervaluing the price of our labor, it is directly harmful to current employees and to the prospects of any future ones.”
Work is not just a pastime, it is you selling labor and time you will never get back. By not properly compensating that labor, UO alienates its workers from their ability to provide for themselves now and in future careers. Because if students are paid the full worth of their labor in college, they have more power to leverage higher wages later.
Samantha Lyon, an employee for the EMU’s Fresh Corner Market enjoys the convenience of her job but says the main setback is the pay and benefits.
“My biggest complaint is the pay; we are paid $13.25, but there’s really no benefits to working,” Lyon said. “At my previous job at least I got tips. Here we’re not allowed to get tips or allowed to have a shift meal.”
There are also reports that UO venues are mismanaged and hostile in their desperate attempts to staff workers. For instance, a third-year student quit their position at Drake’s Deli before even starting.
“I said my max availability was 10 hours a week, and they scheduled me for like 30 hours the week before classes started without asking me,” the student said. “They called me and were like ‘where are you?’ They got mad and said they had a worker shortage and I had to come in, so I quit.”
According to Emerald reporting last May, Director of Dining Services Tom Driscoll said the university was “gearing up to be back at full staffing capacity by September.”
Obviously, this hasn’t happened.
Driscoll did not respond to requests for an interview, but a press release from the Dining Services office stated UO dining has “taken measures to retain and attract additional staff.”
These measures include: a maximum of three $50 referral bonuses, a $50 new staff bonus, a $200 retention if they stay on through the winter term and a food discount program.
These bonuses are enticing up front but will always be less than a simple wage hike in the long term. Moreover, the discount is a wholly convoluted system that is intentionally obtrusive, offering a $0.60 per point markdown up to 5 meal points. Further, it’s not competitive when compared to alternatives like Starbucks, where employees earn $15 an hour with full benefits.
The lengths UO has gone with the bonuses is emblematic that it is not only aware of the real solution, but dancing around it.
In a worst case scenario, we will see the outsourcing of campus jobs, taking positions once available to our neighbors and forcing us to work in a ‘race to the bottom.’ Workers will have to compete for the lowest benefits they are willing to endure in fear of being replaced with another who would work for less.
We students should exercise solidarity with the workers who staff the dining halls, clean the residence halls and allow our university to operate. These laborers face the same strains and economic uncertainty we do as students. We have more in common with the worker who serves us pizza than with our favorite professors.