Campus Food Systems: Safe and healthy workplace
CAMPUS FOOD SYSTEMS
As part of a master’s program in food services management,
Cindy Breen has just begun her internship with Campus Food Systems (CFS) CFS
is a self-operated university food service department at Cindy’s alma mater,
Gulfport State College As a department, CFS reports directly to the vice
president of administration, the office generally responsible for nonacademic
matters co-funded by the school Self-operated food service programs try to
minimize loss rather than maximize profit They are operated by employees of
the institution, as opposed to contract operations run by professional
management companies like Marriott Corporation and ARA Services, profit-making
enterprises
CFS employs about 60 full-time employees In addition, the
staff is supplemented by almost 100 students who provide part-time labor Thus
approximately 160 employees, largely part time, are responsible for providing
three distinct dining services to the Gulfport campus: Watkins Dining Hall
(traditional cafeteria service for residents); Sea Breeze Café (fast-food
service for students, faculty, staff, and guests); and Catering (a full range
of catering services offered both on and off campus) A fourth function,
Stores, orders, receives, inventories, and disburses food and nonfood supplies to
the other three operations
Cindy knows that most self-operated food service programs
are located at much larger universities A small operation like CFS is always
vulnerable to a takeover threat from large contractors like Marriott Smaller
schools are easy targets Also, turnover in the administration makes the threat
of a takeover stronger—and Gulfport has just changed presidents President
Sheila Dawes comes from a large university that used ARA to administer
dining-room operations Cindy’s supervisor, Jake Platt, has told her that she
must help him assure the new college president that CFS should remain
self-operated
Cindy has been working at CFS for only two weeks, and Jake
has just assigned her to manage the student help Her responsibilities include
interviewing, selecting, training, scheduling, and disciplining about 100
part-time employees She also has been charged with preparing a report, Work
Accidents in the Food Service Areas, for the previous calendar year This
report will be sent to President Dawes and the Human Resource Department and
forwarded to both state and OSHA agencies to comply with state and federal
safety and health legislation Jake has told her to minimize the severity of
the reported occupational illness and accident He says that CFS can’t afford
to “inflate” these statistics They might attract President Dawes’s
attention Jake also hinted to Cindy that both her grade in the internship and
a favorable job recommendation rest on how she handles the accident report
Some of the accidents Jake has asked her to minimize include the following:
? Bill
Black, part-time employee, fractured and cut his right hand when a
spring-loaded piston on a food cart snapped back and caught his hand between
the cart and a heavy loading cart door Cindy has learned that Bill’s injury
has resulted in a permanent partial disability of two fingers
? Leslie
Campbell, Ophrah Moses, Cici Potts, Winnie Chung, and George Wilson all cut
their hands on the same meat slicer at different times Each accident was
caused when another employee failed to replace the knife guard after cleaning
it
? Winston
Knapp received burns on his face, chest, legs, and stomach when hot water
splashed out of the steamer into which he had lowered a tray of hot food
Jake has also asked Cindy to omit any accidents for which
reports were not made to Human Resources at the time of the accident So far,
Cindy has documented 46 such incidents, ranging from a box falling on a
student’s head to severe cuts from broken glass and knives But Jake has said
not to worry: They were all student employees who used their parents’ health
insurance to cover medical expenses
Cindy is distressed by the number of accidents that have
occurred during the previous calendar year at CFS She has just reviewed data
from the Bureau of labor Statistics for 1995 in her Restaurant Management
class Cindy knows that working in food service can be quite dangerous, but the
number of accidents at CFS during the last year is about 20 percent more than
in other, comparable small food service operations In addition, she has found
that many accidents were never reported to the state
Another problem with the incident reports Jake has supplied
Cindy to compile her report is the fact that they fail to mention Rick James, a
student employee who contracted a severe case of salmonella poisoning from
handling diseased seafood Rick has just returned from a three-month hospital
stay He had been so ill that he had become paralyzed and at first was not
expected to live He missed almost a whole semester of school Since Rick’s
illness, CFS has forbidden student employees to handle raw seafood, but that
rule has been frequently violated, owing to high absenteeism and turnover of
full-time personnel
Cindy sits contemplating what her sense of values tells her
to do next She has jotted down her alternatives:
1 Prepare the report as Jake has asked, with omissions
2 Prepare the report, but include the incident reports
3 Prepare the report including all incident reports,
previously unreported accidents, and Rick’s serious illness
4 Go to Fred White, CFS director and Jake’s supervisor, and
give him a complete report
5 Send the complete report directly to President Dawes
6 Call OSHA and ask for someone to inspect CFS
7 Leak the story to the student newspaper and the local
press
Discussion Question
What should Cindy do, and why? Frame your answer in terms of
a safe and healthy workplace
The answer should cite references relied upon for the
answer
Please note that (1) all references including in-text
citation should be cited accoding to APA guidelines; and (2) one of the
reference sources should be the book “Human resource management (eleventh
edition)” wrote by John M Ivancevich, published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New
York in 2010