Part-Time Help Banned From Kitchens

A key part of the College's effort to isolate the current salmonella infection includes a moratorium on the hiring of temporary employees in the dining halls--a move that comes almost a month after a Freshman Union employee objected to the use of the temporary workers as a possible health hazard.

Brian F. O'Leary '79, a Mather House resident who works in the Union, wrote a letter to Food Services officials on October 25, complaining that the temporary employees had not been subjected to the same salmonella testing as regularly-scheduled employees--although he said many of them appeared "less healthy and clean" than the regular workers.

University Food Services employs many of the temporary workers--on clean-up details, rather than as food handlers--by an arrangement with TAD's Manpower, a local company that provides many institutions with unskilled laborers, many of whom lack regular jobs or homes.

Most of the temporary employees are "in general, not as healthy or as clean as your regular scheduled employee," O'Leary said last week.

Charles J. Krause Jr., sanitary inspector for University Health Services (UHS), said last week that he had also received a copy of O'Leary's letter, but did not agree that the temporary employees constitute a health hazard.

"From the standpoint of the people I've seen they don't look different from anybody else," Krause said.

Because of his misgivings about the failure to test the temporary workers, O'Leary refused for almost a week to take the stool culture test required of all Union employees. Krause said, however, that only one temporary employee had worked at the Union during the time when the disease could have been transmitted, and that he had been tested and found not to be a carrier.

Probable Source

The probable sources of the Union outbreak of salmonella have been traced to a regular worker and a student employee, Krause said. O'Leary has since taken the test.

Dr. Warren E.C. Wacker, director of UHS, said last night that the temporary employees were not banned because they are considered health hazards. Wacker said it would be impossible to test the temporary employees--who are assigned on a day-to-day basis--because UHS does not receive test results until three days after the testing.

The University has not released figures on exact numbers of temporary employees.