Behind the walls of the Busey-Evans dining area, cook Gloria Von Behren lays out the batter for the morning’s breakfast on a stove: chocolate chip pancakes. Her carefully guided hand tilts the ladle to form a medium-sized, sizzling circle.

Behren, a second-generation chef for the University, is 51 years old and has been a food service employee for 17 years. In that time, she has worked at every dining hall on campus, but while she loves her job, she feels she deserves more.

Behren belongs to the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, Local 73, which represents more than 800 employees at the University. She, along with 91 percent of SEIU members who voted on Jan. 25, opted to give the union’s bargaining team the power to decide whether to strike. Her reasoning, as she put it: “We can’t keep going backwards.”

As Behren dunks her ladle into the batter for another round of pancakes, her free hand starts to tingle, a side effect from carpal tunnel syndrome.

“We love what we do, or we wouldn’t stay, (but) this job wears us out,” she said. “I had a co-worker walking around for two years on broken feet because she was too afraid to go take some damn time off.”

Behren said she and other SEIU food service workers only take sick leave sparingly because sick days reduce their pensions. These workers also say they’re at a disadvantage because they can only work full-time when school is in session.

“We sacrifice for our jobs,” she said. “We lose our phones; we default on our loans. We can’t maintain (our livelihood) because there isn’t enough business during the (breaks). It hurts us immensely.”

Ricky Baldwin, chief negotiator for SEIU, said food service employees work full-time for seven and a half months per year. The rest of the year, they can either take intermittent work through the University or can choose to work part-time outside the University.

“There are many additional opportunities for employees to work in the summer on events and camps,” said University spokeswoman Robin Kaler in an email. “Also, other departments often hire those employees for extra help during the summer.”

However, Behren said food service workers struggle to find jobs during those breaks, which she referred to as “lay-offs.”

“(Employers) will deny me jobs because I work at the University because they know that (after) my lay-offs, I’m going to go back to the University,” Behren said. “There’s just not enough work to go around.”

According to a report prepared by the University’s Labor & Employee Relations unit, cooks at the University who have worked for at least four years, like Behren, are paid in the top ten percentile in their labor market area. However, Behren said the $17.49 an hour she earns isn’t enough to make up for the losses she takes during her “lay-offs” and because of inflation.

In 2006, Behren and the rest of SEIU say they had little to complain about when it came to wages; every year, they received a raise through the campus wage program. The program sets a flat rate, nonnegotiable pay increase given to most University workers to compensate for inflation. Union members departed from the program briefly in contract year 2007-2008, and they received a 3 percent increase that topped the campus wage rate of 2.5 percent.

In 2008-2009, the union returned to the campus wage program. But that year, they received a 1.5 percent increase, which was below inflation. And when contract year 2009-2010 came, the campus wage program offered no raise at all.

“Our people didn’t like that,” Baldwin said. “(They) started losing ground. It made it harder to pay the bills because the bills went up a certain amount due to inflation while their wages didn’t.”

Kaler said the cuts to the campus wage program and various others were the result of budget cuts by the state.

“Wages were frozen, and many University administrators were furloughed from their jobs to ensure that the institution could make payroll for all employees,” she said.

As a result of the contract year 2009-2010 campus wage, SEIU negotiators threatened to strike during contract negotiations and managed to work out a deal with the University.

The union left the campus wage program and negotiated a “base rate” percentage increase with the University, agreeing that if the campus wage rate turned out to be higher than that base, they’d instead take the campus wage rate. If not, “we’d at least receive something,” Baldwin said.

But now, during negotiations for the next contract, the University wants to put SEIU members back on the campus wage program.

“With so much financial uncertainty in the state’s future, it’s important that all employee groups face the challenge together,” Kaler said.

When negotiations resume Tuesday for the food service workers contract, Baldwin will continue to push for the SEIU to stay off the campus wage program.

“We are asking for additional money to cover increases in health care and pension costs expected later this year as well as an adjustment for 2009 to 2010 in which the campus wage ran well below inflation,” he said. “So far, we are offered nothing for next year but the extremely open-ended campus wage, which could be announced arbitrarily as zero as in the past.”

Behren said the “trickle-up” campus wage program leaves food service workers with a disproportionate wage compared to University administrators.

“We can’t keep playing a rich man’s game out of a poor man’s pocket,” she said. “We’re broke.”

Austin can be reached at [email protected].