U. lays off 35 Faculty Club employees

Marcella Pough, a 31-year-old mother of six, learned something about opportunity when she began to work at the Faculty Club. "I had a lot of hopes when I came here," Pough said, explaining that she hoped that in a few years her 15-year-old daughter would benefit from the tuition break she could receive as the child of a University employee. But the opening of Sansom Common's hotel this summer will leave Pough -- and the rest of the 35 Faculty Club employees -- without work as of July, when the Faculty Club becomes part of the DoubleTree Hotels' Inn at Penn. As a result of the new management, the University will lay off the workers currently staffing the Faculty Club and the Kosher Dining Services. "DoubleTree is a new employer so we cannot offer those jobs," Vice President of Human Resources Jack Heuer explained. "We've told [the employees' union] to talk to DoubleTree and they have not." Heuer added that union officials did not respond to a severance package offered by the University on October 5. The package included interviewing rights for current Faculty Club employees wishing to apply to the Inn at Penn, a 3 percent wage increase in the final year of employment, higher pension contributions until their termination and a lump-sum signing bonus if the issue was resolved by October 19. But the workers, represented by Union Local 274, said they feel they should not have to reapply for jobs they currently hold. "This is insanity," said Local 274 President Patrick Coughlan. "They're taking average working people, throwing them out of their job and then telling them that they can reapply for the same job." Peter Marks, the attorney representing Local 274 in the negotiations, explained that a severance pay clause doesn't help workers because "what they really need are the [standard health] benefits." Marks has filed unfair labor charges with the federal government and a mediator has been called in. "Legally, [University officials] cannot do what they want to do and get away with it unscathed," Marks said. Still, Faculty Club workers said they are frightened and angry. "I want my job," said Robert Bosworth, a 41-year-old employee who has worked at the Faculty Club -- located at 36th and Walnut streets -- for nine years. "We've got families, mortgages? they talk about how they care about people, but now they want to kick us out in the street." Penn officials announced in July they would create a contract to terminate employment after this year, Bosworth said. Workers like Richard Lees, 34, said they wouldn't mind working someplace else if they could only keep their jobs. Coughlan stressed that the workers will not go quietly. "We plan to step up our activities to make the University community and the city aware of the insensitivity of the management of [the University]," he said. According to Bosworth, Sullivan told several employees that the Faculty Club's current budgetary deficit is the cause for dismissal. But Heuer disputed that the dismissals are related to the deficit. "This is a layoff due to lack of work because the business enterprise is closing," Heuer explained. "We are making this decision because we have a new opportunity with a new hotel and a new property."