For Glacier Park, Diversity is Job 1

When Gail Meineke chose to work in Glacier National Park, she had no idea that her seasonal job as a sous-chef would include helping a young Eastern European man learn to speak English.

Meineke, 39, has commuted from her home in Browning on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to her job at East Glacier’s Glacier Park Lodge for four years.

Aleksandrs Bagelis, 25, traveled to Montana from his home in Latvia--on the Baltic Sea and about 5,300 miles from Glacier--to gain experience, earn money and see a small slice of America.

Meineke said the park offers workers from the reservation a chance to have full-time work for at least part of the year.

“There’s no jobs in Browning, and up here it’s more fun. You meet all these people,” she said. Meineke works from May through October and said she looks forward to returning to the hotel each year, especially since she gets to work with people from throughout the globe.

“It’s kind of nice because I’m teaching the guy, and he’s really fun,” Meineke said, pointing to Bagelis. “It’s teaching everyone something about different places and cultures.”

Meineke and Bagelis are two examples of how Glacier’s work force has grown more diverse in recent years. There is a distinctly foreign flavor to the park this summer, and international workers from such far-off places as Croatia, Poland and Romania are being joined by a growing contingent of older, retired workers.

It’s a move designed to combat American college students’ limited schedules and a decrease in interest for certain positions.

For Glacier Park Inc., the concessionaire that operates about 750 rooms in seven properties scattered throughout Glacier and in adjoining Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, finding enough workers to serve park visitors in an ever-expanding summer season is a challenge.

Director of Human Resources Leon Stiffarm, 34, has faced that challenge for the last eight years. He said he has had to adapt the company’s hiring practices to changes in student schedules, hotel closing dates and a lack of interest in particular departments, including housekeeping and the kitchen.

“I’m diversifying our employment portfolio,” Stiffarm said, pointing to the 120 international workers, the growing number of senior workers, and the Blackfeet employees that are working in Glacier this year.

Stiffarm is responsible for hiring about 800 employees for the six U.S. properties and an additional 200 for the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton.

Although Stiffarm still recruits college students, especially those studying hotel management and culinary arts, he is devoting more time to promoting Glacier’s jobs abroad and to active retirees, he said.

“The culture in America doesn’t suit that work force anymore,” Stiffarm said of the college students who used to fill the vast majority of positions in Glacier. Because more and more students are heading back to school while operations in parks such as Glacier are still in full swing, Stiffarm said he had to do something to ensure superior service at the end of the season.

“You can’t be competitive in your marketplace and give substandard service in September,” he said. “It comes down to providing good, consistent service. If not, people won’t come back, and there is major competition in travel.”

According to Tony Donald, the director of Work Experience USA, the demand from international students seeking work experience in the United States has always been high. The difference today, he added, is that more and more U.S. companies are giving those international workers the opportunity to work.

Work Experience USA, based in Sausalito, Calif., annually recruits upward of 5,500 international workers for resort, amusement park, ranch and casino jobs throughout the United States, including positions in Glacier National Park. The nationwide number increases each year, Donald added.

“A lot of employers are having difficulty finding workers, especially with the economic situation so good in recent years,” Donald said. “And some employers are definitely looking for diversity.”

Listening to the foreign accents at Glacier Park Lodge’s front desk and restaurant leaves no doubt how diverse the work force has become.

Like Latvia’s Bagelis, front desk employee Zita Zillmann traveled thousands of miles from her home in order to gain experience in America.

Zillmann, 22, lives and studies in Romania, where she is majoring in marketing and management.

“I came to the United States to experience life in a foreign country, and what I learn at the university I am putting in practice here,” she said.

Zillmann, who will remain at the lodge until it closes at the end of September, also works as a hostess in a restaurant in East Glacier.

Former Great Falls, Mont. resident B.J. Morse, in her early 50s and now residing in Florida, works as the assistant manager of Glacier Park Lodge’s gift shop. It is her first summer in the park, and Morse said she is “just testing it out” this summer.

“There’s such a variety of employees, and I hear comments from people that they’re surprised to see people from all over when they read our name tags,” Morse said. “From a staff perspective, it’s wonderful to meet all these different people.”

As for the older workers who have sought out work in Glacier, Morse said a lot of senior travelers appreciate being served by someone closer to their own age. Sometimes the park’s older workers are the best recruitment tools that Glacier Park Inc.’s human resource department could ask for.

Boise residents Bill and Mary Mealer, 67 and 58, respectively, stopped in Glacier Park Lodge’s gift shop last week to ask 63-year-old employee Sylvia Heard how they might apply for summer 2002 jobs. Heard and her 77-year-old husband, Bill, traveled from Alabama to work in East Glacier this year.

The Mealers have spent the past few summers volunteering in Havre’s Nazarene Church. They live in a fifth-wheel trailer, and they said they would gladly park it in Glacier for a summer or two.

“We have talents to share, and we have decided we’d better do this while we’re able,” retired locksmith Bill Mealer said of working in a national park.

“We’ve decided it’s something we’re going to try,” said Mary Mealer. “It’s an adventure.”

A more pressing challenge for the company is the decreasing interest in some of the hotel’s positions, including housekeeper and dishwasher.

Because of the problems the company has had finding Americans to fill those positions, an 80-person Mexican crew traveled to the Many Glacier Hotel this summer to provide the hotel with most of its housekeeping services.

“People in America don’t want to do those jobs. We’re just not finding people,” Stiffarm said. “It’s not realistic because many people approach service jobs with contempt.”