× Expand Thomas DeVillers Staff shortages are contributing to lines at Union South.

A line forms and stretches out by a nearby coffee counter during the Monday lunch rush at Ginger Root, the most popular restaurant in Union South. The long line has become a familiar sight to Martha Morganstein, who works at the restaurant.

Morganstein generally likes working at Ginger Root, although she knows it’s “not the most attractive job.” It’s hard work and she often leaves tired, later showing up to class “smelling like sesame chicken.” But lately, the shifts have gotten “very stressful” for Morganstein, a junior at UW-Madison.

During a typical three-hour shift she barely has a moment for a break. There just isn’t enough staff. The restaurant needs four to five workers to handle a rush, says Morganstein, who has worked at restaurants for almost two years. Lately there’s often only two students working the shift.

Ginger Root isn’t the only place in the Union — or on campus — struggling with a shortage of workers. Some of the largest employers on campus currently have hundreds of unfilled student-worker positions, despite a concerted recruitment effort.

“We do have open student positions available. We’ve been hiring some students this fall semester as the semester progresses, trying to build up to some of those positions,” says Brendon Dybdahl, director of marketing and communications for University Housing. “We — and other departments on campus — have seen more of a challenge in filling some of those student positions.”

The Wisconsin Union, one of the largest employers of students on campus, had 1,749 student employees at the end of September. There were another 387 positions that were unfilled, says Shauna Breneman, the Union’s communications director. And each one of those positions has “the potential to negatively impact [the Union’s] operations,” says Tim Borchert, the Union’s human resources director.

One part of the Wisconsin Union, the Memorial Union, recently underwent a more than $100 million renovation. Borchert says student employee totals are likely the same pre- and post-renovation.

Kate, a student who works at a Memorial Union restaurant and declined to share her last name, says they’ve been swamped since the renovation was complete and the new Alumni Park opened. With high turnover of student employees and “a lot of people who just don’t take it seriously,” she says there has “definitely been a lot of shortages on shifts.”

For particularly tough mornings, which for her fall on Sundays, lines can be 20-people long and often wind out of the restaurant. So, how long does it take for someone to order and get their food?

“It depends on how many people are working,” Kate says. “I’ve had it when there are two people working … and that’s when it gets the worst.”

Students who work in the Union fill positions in every area, from dining to facilities. Borchert, who declined a phone interview and answered questions via email, says, “Our student employees serve vital roles in departments across the Union.”

The Union has aggressively tried to recruit new students for employment through many different means, including campus employment fair kiosks; information tables in Union South and Memorial Union; advertisements on Facebook, digital signs, the Union website and Instagram; e-mail marketing; and flyers pasted around campus. When students consider leaving employment, supervisors sometimes offer pay bumps or promotions as incentives to retain them.

Still, hundreds of positions remain unfilled. Borchert says he can’t speculate about why students aren’t seeking employment. Dybdahl offers one possible explanation. During the recession, he says there was a waiting list of students applying for jobs. But as the economy slowly improved, he noticed a decline in applications.

“We’ve been saying for awhile that as the economy has gradually picked back up over the years, some of the students maybe have more resources and have not had to work, or have wanted to focus on their classes,” Dybdahl says. “That’s sort of, again anecdotally, what we’ve seen as one possible cause of it.”

It's a trend that’s corresponds with a statewide worker shortage.

Like the Union, University Housing utilizes students to fill positions throughout its entire operation. “We rely on students to do a lot of things — work at our desks, serve food, prepare food, clean residence halls, and then a lot of office-type positions,” Dybdahl says. “We have a pretty large group, the largest on campus.”

Housing does not track the number of student vacancies for unfilled positions because there isn’t a business need for the statistic, says Lisa Hull, records custodian for UW-Madison. She says if a unit needs 20 hours of work a week that might be filled by one to three students, based on their availability, so employee numbers fluctuate.

But in spring 2016, Dybdahl says housing learned how many of its residents worked. Annually, housing does a survey of its residents, and last spring, for the first time, it asked if they worked in housing, on campus, off campus or not at all. Roughly 2,000 students responded.

“It was surprising that right around 50 percent, maybe 52 percent, did not have any job at all, on-campus or off-campus,” Dybdahl says.

Morganstein says she knows what happens when shifts are particularly hectic. Although she doesn’t have to stay late, her student supervisors often get stuck washing dishes and cleaning Ginger Root — which closes at 8 p.m. — sometimes until 1 a.m.