Dining services underpays
Starting salaries put employees below poverty line
By Ashley Hopkins and Kaleigh Maher, staff writers
Posted on December 7, 2006

Even though she enjoys her job with JMU Dining Services, Krystal Kenney, 25, feels that without her husband working two jobs, she would not be able to support their three children.

Kenney is a shop supervisor for Top Dog Café, where she has worked for a year-and-a-half.

“I always wanted to be working with people and fixing food, you know, the whole life,” Kenney said.

Despite her passion for food services, Kenney acknowledges that her family of five would be struggling on the $8.97 she makes per hour. Her husband works full time as a diesel mechanic and pulls in extra income with his part-time work for a contractor.

While the Kenney family needs the extra income, Krystal would love to be able to spend more time with her husband.

“But it’s kind of made us closer as a couple,” Kenney said. “So the time we spend together, we really cherish it. The time he spends with the kids, they have a ball.”

More than half of JMU’s full-time Dining Services employees earn less than $22,298 per year, the living wage as determined by a study at the University of Virginia, according to the salaries published on The Breeze’s Web site in 2003. Of those whose earnings exceeded a living wage — the amount needed to comfortably support yourself and one dependent — the majority had reached an upper-level position such as manager, supervisor or director.

“I have always been an advocate of earning above [the living wage],” sophomore Melissa Noble said. “I think Dining Services employees work hard enough to earn more than that.”

Stephanie Hoshower, resident district manager of Dining Services, said Dining Services values their workers, providing them with open communication and on-the-job training.

“We are committed to providing fair and competitive compensation to our employees,” she said.

Part of this compensation comes in bonuses offered to employees exhibiting superior work. Kenney received one of these bonuses last year.

“It is their way of saying thank you for doing far and beyond what your job duty is,” she said.

Hoshower said, “We implement an employee recognition and incentive program and provide spot bonuses to recognize employees for outstanding service.”

Eight years ago, U.Va. started the Living Wage Campaign, an organization striving to gain public support to increase the minimum wage. Last year, the campaign experienced a revival, during which 17 students were arrested and later found not guilty after participating in an on-campus sit-in. 

U.Va.’s campaign was successful to an extent. Now the university can raise faculty salaries, but it still has no influence on classified employees.

In Virginia, the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, the same as the federally mandated wage. A full-time worker with a family of three working 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year would earn $10,712 a year, leaving them below the official 2006 federal poverty level of $16,600.

“I think the minimum wage is way too low,” junior Amanda Portman said. “It’s hard to imagine living on $5.15 as a student without having to support anyone else.”

JMU’s Dining Services employees start at $7 per hour, meaning one year’s salary for a full-time employee would be $14,560, still below the federal poverty level for a family of three.

The minimum wage has not changed since 1997; this year, Virginia state Sen. Charles Colgan, D-29th district, proposed a bill to increase the minimum wage by one dollar on June 1 and an additional dollar each year until 2008. In the House, Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr., R-34th district, proposed a similar bill to increase minimum wage. Neither bill was passed and the vote ended all efforts for the remainder of the year.

“I think they need to raise [the minimum wage] because, when it comes down to it, these are individuals we are talking about,” sophomore Melissa Wentzel said. “A lot of people think it’s necessary for capitalism to have poverty, but I think we need to look at these people as individuals and not as a part of the system.”

Junior Paige Ericson agrees with Wentzel.

“I don’t think people realize how hard you have to work in any sort of service industry. I think that all hard work should be rewarded,” she said.

Kenney and her family understand the value of hard work.

“If you want to get anywhere in life you have to work hard for the things you have. Everything we have we worked hard for. We’re proud for what we have.”