After two months, student employees Grace Kachelski and Sarannya Bhattacharya, who started a petition against the Union’s Thoughtful Investment in the Potential of Staff (TIPS) initiative, told The Daily Cardinal little has changed related to TIPS at the Union.
Both Bhattacharya and Kachelski critiqued the TIPS initiative, which goes towards pooled employee benefits rather than personal gratuities. Since they first raised concerns to the media in August, they told the Cardinal little change has been made to the Union’s TIPS branding.
“One thing we would like to hear [is] what are [Union leadership] doing to be more transparent about the TIPS system?” Bhattacharya said. “If anything, they have become less transparent about the money.”
Kachelski added that after Bhattacharya was temporarily placed on leave from August to early October, student employees are less “inclined to let a customer know that [TIPS] don’t go directly to us” if a manager is within earshot.
Wisconsin Union Public Relations and Communications Officer Shauna Breneman told The Daily Cardinal that the Union frequently shares “operational updates and helpful information with Wisconsin Union staff to help them stay informed and support their teams.”
“In August, the Union human resources team reminded supervisors about Wisconsin Union Student Employee Recognition Fund information, including the fund’s purpose in sustaining student employee recognition, how the fund is used for student employees, and how student input helps guide the fund’s use, as well as shared with supervisors that the fund grew following the addition of the option for patrons to make donations with their credit cards during credit card transactions,” Breneman said.
Ben Weinberger, a constitutional law professor in the United Kingdom who is planning to attain his Wisconsin bar license, told the Cardinal the Union’s TIPS branding could violate consumer protection laws including Wis. Stat 100.18., depending on what consumers are led to believe they are donating to as they walk through a checkout line.
He added a tip is generally thought of as a “voluntary customer gift in recognition of service, [where] the customer decides the amount and who the recipient is,” and the branding legality depends on the perception of consumers who leave TIPS.
“There’s been no change — if anything, all the managers have cracked down even more on having TIPS out,” Bhattacharya said. “There's no clear policy on what students are supposed to tell [customers] but if customers ask, then we're supposed to say that it doesn't go towards a single worker, but towards everybody's ‘employment benefits’… we're not allowed to say flat out no or refus[e] tips.”
Student Services Finance Committee (SSFC) Brock Titus said at an Oct. 8 SSFC meeting he raised concerns about the Union's TIPS branding to Chancellor Eric Wilcots after hearing about TIPS from building managers at the Union.
According to Titus, Wilcots was “shocked” and suggested Titus organize a meeting between SSFC, the Associated Students of Madison Chair Haia Al Zein and Union leaders Ed Janeiro and Mark Guthier.
“[Janeiro and Guthier] invited eight students to talk on their behalf, which I thought was kind of crazy, and then they did not answer any of my questions,” Titus said at an Oct. 8 SSFC meeting.
Titus said Janeiro and Guthier told him at the meeting that splitting the money currently sitting in the TIPS fund, which is at least $209,000, would come out to around a $200 bonus per student worker.
“They said [the $200 bonus] wasn’t that much,” Titus said. “I mean, I put myself through college. I feel like $200 could change a lot… so [I’m] kind of appalled by that and how they handled themselves at the [Oct. 8] union council meeting.”
SSFC representative Sam Bass stated the Union is looking at ways to clarify TIPS are donations rather than personal gratuities, based on his attendance at an Oct. 8 Union Council meeting.
“Apparently nobody read this — [Janeiro] used the phrase ‘small print’ — on the sign [where] we said T-I-P-S,” Bass said. “No matter what the sign says…it would not matter because you're being confronted with a tip screen.”
TIPS fund student worker benefits, including employee meal coupons and graduation gift bags, but do not go towards student worker salaries.
“I think that it's incredibly misleading to ask for tips to pay for that, and it is not at all what people understand to be happening,” Bass said at the SSFC meeting.
Bhattacharya and Kachelski reiterated they would like the TIPS fund to be abolished, but said in an ideal world, the money already in the fund should be distributed among student workers.
“At the end of the day, that's what people are tipping for: the student employees,” Kachelski said. “I think the best thing would be for them to receive the money.”
Sonia Bendre is the campus news editor for The Daily Cardinal. You can reach her at sonia.bendre@dailycardinal.com.
