PETITION--Custodian Demands and Letter to Faculty/Staff

The following petition was written by ABC after we were informed that faculty and staff were starting to notice a change in custodial service. We drafted this first as an open letter to let faculty and staff (such as program directors) know why these changes were happening. After talking with custodial staff who pushed for a more active engagement, we turned this into a paper and online petition. Faculty can now not only read about changes, but do something about them! Cuts to custodial staff, manager retaliation, and changes in the workplace make the University unsafe for everyone. Please print and sign, particularly if you are faculty, staff, research assistant or teaching assistant at UW, and contact us to know how to get your signed petition to us. You can also sign by e-mailing us your name, date, position/department, e-mail address and phone number at abccoalitionuw@gmail.com. You can also sign this petition online!

STOP THE UNFAIR, UNSAFE, UNSANITARY SPEED UP OF CUSTODIAL SERVICES

Dear faculty, staff, students and other concerned members of the University of Washington:

The University of Washington proposed budget cuts, tuition hikes and layoffs disproportionately affect immigrants, people of color, women, people with disabilities, and queer people. This is clearly illustrated by the U of W using all its weight and power to crush the custodians. What is happening to the custodians today can and will happen to other U of W employees tomorrow unless we stand in solidarity with the custodians now.

You may notice changes in the quality of cleaning services to your buildings, departments, and offices. Trash cans un-emptied, lack of vacuuming, or disruptive cleaning procedures during the middle of the workday. We are writing to let you know why standards have deteriorated, and to ask for your support of the custodians who are battling management to save their jobs and keep the university buildings clean, sanitary and safe for everybody.

The administrators of the University of Washington claim that the current economic crisis has led them to impose the cuts to staff and services. But Custodial Services, like many other U of W departments, have been cutting staff jobs for years all the while increasing the number of highly paid managers, directors, administrators, etc. Following the May 28th open meeting with the Board of Regents the custodian asked why cuts and shift changes were being used to balance the budget instead of paid cuts to the many layers of management they were answered with drastic layoffs, work changes and other forms of retaliation.

+ Lay off of 17 custodial staff which will be implemented in July 2009, this as the U of W continues to add more buildings for the skeleton custodian staff to maintain.

+ Current vacancies not being filled through new hiring thereby pressuring one custodian to do the work of two or three people.

+ Forcing 35 custodians from swing shift to day shift effective July 1st. This will require custodians to race through many jobs they used to have 8 hours to do in the 3 hour time period from 5 AM until 8 AM when classes/ labs open. This impossible work load is a recipe for on the job injuries and accidents.

+Changing the custodian work conditions to what management ironically calls “team-cleaning” which in reality makes the custodial work slower, less effective, more monotonous and difficult.


+Management has ordered the custodians to no longer empty office trash cans.

+Management is implementing the use of water-less cleaning products which exposes workers, students, staff, and faculty to excessive chemicals.

The University of Washington likes to present a liberal and friendly face to the community at large has been petty and ruthless in retaliating against custodians who have spoken up about their work conditions and shifts.

+Custodians have been arbitrarily and in some cases frequently switched to new locations without warning or training.

+Custodians have been switched to different managers; this has required them to walk farther between their punch-in location and their worksites, with some having to walk 15 minutes in the dark. This decreases the time for staff to clean.


All of these changes create a hostile working environment and impose an unsafe and unsustainable speed up of the work-rate, making it more difficult for custodians to do their jobs well. For this reason, custodians continue to demand:

+ No team cleaning
+ No frequent or arbitrary building transfers
+ No management retaliation against workers and shop stewards
+ Keep ALL of the swing shift positions, not just 50.
+ Rehire the 17 people who have been laid off

The issues outlined above affect not just the custodial staff who are losing jobs, missing time with children, and risking safety, but also students’ ability to learn, and teachers’ ability to teach.

Management is justifying all of these changes by appealing to the budget cuts, even if they had been planning some of them well in advance. The budget recently approved by the Board of Regents also proposes a number of other cuts that directly affect students and faculty, including an almost 50% cut to the women’s center, cuts to disability studies, cuts to TA’s and RA’s, non-tenured faculty, and a number of other programs and departments. It also raises student tuition 28 % over two years. Many of these cuts come in batches of under $100,000. Meanwhile, many top level administrators continue to make over $400,000 a year.

Students and staff have been very active in proposing alternatives, and we have developed a public budget that does not include tuition hikes or cuts to students, low and middle-wage staff, or faculty but cuts from the top instead. We ask you now to sign this petition to show your support for the custodians’ demands and for clean and safe buildings at UW. We also encourage you to call Gene Woodard, director of Custodial Services at 206-543-7831 to register your concerns, or email him at: gwoodard@u.washington.edu.


Thank you very much for your time. Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition has meetings every Thursday at 6 PM in 206 Parrington Hall, and would love for you to join us. You can contact us at abccoalitionuw@gmail.com or check online at nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com for more information



Name and Signature

Date Position/Department Email Phone

Seattle Times Article

The following article was written after Marla Bradeen was retaliated against for communicating with press; as is noted, formal allegations were never made. We have since been informed that she is back to work.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009351619_custodianfolo18m.html

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - Page updated at 08:46 PM

UW employee given leave after talking to media
By Lindsay Toler

Seattle Times staff reporter

The University of Washington has placed an employee on administrative
leave after she talked to the media about a controversial budget-cut
absorbing method.

Marla Bradeen, an analyst with the facilities services department, was
mentioned in a seattletimes.com story last week about the department's
plan to lay off 17 custodians and eliminate the night shift for many
remaining workers. While the change would cut costs, it could also
force night-shift custodians to quit other daytime jobs or find new
daytime caretakers for children or elderly parents.

Bradeen, an analyst with the facilities services department, received
a letter Friday informing her she was under investigation for
releasing confidential and sensitive information without permission.
The letter was dated June 11, the same day UW custodians and students
held a rally to protest the shift switch.

Bradeen answered an emphatic, "No," today when asked whether she felt
she disclosed confidential or sensitive information to media outlets.

Employees from UW's human resources department said they do not
comment on the personnel matters.

Bradeen said she met with human resource employees today. When her
request to record the meeting was denied, she asked the department to
send the allegations against her in writing. She said she was informed
that there were no allegations made against her but that an
investigation was being launched.

"I'd like to hear what I'm accused of, but apparently no one knows,"
she said.

The Seattle Times was the only media outlet that mentioned Bradeen by
name, although she says she also spoke with radio station KUOW-94.9.

Bradeen was quoted in two news releases by a group organizing the
rally, the Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition. The news releases quoted
Bradeen saying the shift switch was an empty gesture to "leave the
impression" that the department needed more funding. Financial
information released to the media, such as the salaries of managers
and the department's budget, also was attributed to her.

Lindsay Toler: 206-464-2463 or ltoler@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

PRESS RELEASE-June 11th

The following press release was put out on for the June 11th Rally and Board of Regents Meeting

PRESS RELEASE- For Immediate Release
June 11, 2009

Press Contacts:
Veryl Pow 253 678-4402; visfortruth@gmail.com
April Nishimura 425 281-0500; april.nishimura@gmail.com
UW Custodians Continue to Fight On-Campus Abuse
Unsatisfied with Short-term Victory, Custodians Continue to Fight; Students and Workers to Confront UW Board of Regents

Unsatisfied with the short-term victory gained from the previous rally on May 28th, enraged custodians at UW continue to fight alongside students to retain their nightshift jobs. This Thursday, June 11th, custodians and students will be escalating the fight by directly confronting the Assistant Vice President of Facilities Services, Charles Kennedy, who administers Custodial Services. At the previous rally, over two hundred custodians and students demonstrated to prevent the management of Custodial Services from re-assigning all nightshift custodians to dayshifts on June 1st. The strong and energetic showing at the rally successfully pressured management to temporarily delay the transfer over to dayshift by one month, or July 1st. However, despite this delay, on July 1st, nightshift custodians are set to be transferred onto dayshift, an impractical move for those with second jobs or those who normally take care of their children or aging parents during the day. For some who require second day jobs to supplement the meager $20,000-$30,000 they earn as custodians, the transfer over to dayshift means losing their houses altogether because of the inability to pay mortgages on the custodial salary alone.

Despite strong community support for custodians, management has already laid off 17 custodians, eliminated 29 other vacant custodial positions, and shown its tenacity to push through the transfer to dayshift. Management is retaliating against dayshift custodians who participated in the May 28th rally by reassigning their parking locations. Management is retaliating against dayshift custodians who participated in the May 28th rally by reassigning their managers, and thus their time punch locations starting the Monday after the rally. Whearas previously custodians punched in at or close to their worksites, some have now been reassigned time punch locations much further away, with some (including many women) forced to walk upwards of forty-five minutes in the middle of the night (dayshift begins at 5 a.m.) before arriving to their worksites.
Management has also retaliated by assigning those workers who attended the May 28th rally additional tasks that are beyond their workload. Workers have also been randomly reassigned to new workplaces they have never worked at before.

Additionally, in anticipation of the transfer on July 1st, management has already introduced “team cleaning” among some dayshift workers. “Team cleaning,” in which groups of custodians are assigned specific tasks and work in teams, will replace the current model of custodians assuming numerous duties individually. “Team cleaning” is viewed by management as an adequate measure to compensate for the shorter period of time custodians will have to clean all the classrooms and labs after the transfer. While nightshift custodians now have eight hours to clean classrooms, transferring them over to dayshift means that custodians will only have three hours to clean classrooms and labs before lectures and lab sessions begin at 8 a.m. Many custodians, such as James Wilson, have complained that “team cleaning” instead slows the cleaning process because “management is shoving workers into groups where each [custodian] is unfamiliar with the cleaning techniques of the others.” Furthermore, lab technicians in the Health Sciences building have also voiced concern that eliminating night-time cleaning will interfere with the quality of their research. UW professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences, Mary-Claire King, runs a laboratory in Health Sciences, which brings in millions of dollars to in federally funded grants to the university. She worries that after the transfer, custodians will have to continue cleaning into lab sessions to ensure a clean and safe work environment. According to King, “My lab has 32 people working at lab benches with highly fragile constructs and reagents all day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m…if these custodians had to work around 32 people, it would be madness.”

Management has continually framed the layoffs and transfers as necessary cost-saving measures in these troubled economic times. However, according to custodian Ken Mills, who took part in negotiations with management, “We’re willing to make concessions that will give [the university] the same savings through another method.” In an attempt to save the nightshift, the union representing the custodians, the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) 1144, conceded to give up its night-time shift differential, which amounts to $180,000. WFSE’s concession, attempts to negate the cost-saving rationale behind management’s transfers. In response, management has accepted the union’s offer to deduct the shift differential, but has not held up its end. In fact, it fully intends to carry out the transfers on July 1st. Jane Mee Wong, a member of the Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition, believes that the transfer has nothing to do with the budget crisis, but is “part of a larger, long-term push to squeeze custodians, reducing the number of custodians, and increasing their workload while their real wages and benefits decline.” Indeed, Gene Woodard, the Director of Custodial Services, has said, “It’s been a long-term trend of ours to move buildings to the day shift. We’ve been doing this since 1997…In 1997, we had 35 custodians on days, and now we have 186 custodians on days.”

To add to the doubts of management’s claims of cost-saving, allegations of management corruption have recently surfaced. According to Marla Bradeen, an analyst at the Finance and Business Services, which oversees the expenditures of Facilities Services, “Facilities Services appears committed to cutting services and personnel in order to prove the department’s need to more funding.” She believes that custodial management would rather cut staff and services to create an illusion that Facilities Services was already facing budget cuts and therefore, would be able to retain its full funding. She continues, “Cutting salaries or implementing furloughs may leave the impression that Facilities Services could easily withstand budget cuts and place our department in the position of having to absorb additional cuts in the future.” Thus, neither Charles Kennedy, whose salary has increased 30% over the past couple of years from $200,000 to $260,000, nor Gene Woodard, whose salary is $133,560, face salary reductions, despite the aforementioned layoffs to 17 custodians and the transfer of nightshift custodians to the dayshift. In other words, the layoffs and transfer are visible measures that give the impression of a budget shortfall within Facilities Services, but are designed to effectively preserve the high salaries of management. Marla speculates that this is the reason why the 2.5 million dollar surplus money that Facilities Services has carried over into the fiscal year is not being tapped to save custodial jobs, but instead to “improve infrastructure” such as renovating the Physical Plant Office Building where Charles Kennedy’s office is located. Matthew Hamilton, member of the Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition, believes Custodial Services is moving towards a “top-heavy management structure” where the increase in management’s pay is matched by an increase in the number of managers overseeing a decreasing custodian workforce. Currently ten managers and ten supervisors manage 260 custodians.

According to student Alice Roesch-Knapp, “The custodial situation is a microcosm of how budget cuts are being distributed across the University of Washington. Tuition hikes are making higher education less accessible, and are a sign of how UW is being privatized.” Privatizing the custodial staff would mean the elimination of retirement, benefits, health insurance, sick leave and vacation time and union protection from other worker abuses. Because of the increased privatization of the university, following the confrontation with Charles Kennedy, custodians and students will then head to the UW Board of Regents meeting to challenge the budget cuts expected to be passed earlier that morning. Cuts will disproportionately affect UW’s most vulnerable populations such as custodians and low-income youth by raising tuition levels to 28% over the next two years. In addition, students will be paying more for a reduced quality of education. At least six branch libraries are expected to close, the future of the Disability Studies department is uncertain, and the Women’s Center faces a 50% cut in its budget and the elimination of all work-study positions. According to Jane Mee Wong, “The current budget cuts at UW are not simply an issue of fiscal policy, but one of civil rights and access of the university to women, students of color, and working class students.”

At the Regents meeting, custodians and students will demand that the Regents instead adopt an alternative budget developed by students, staff, and community members that proposes viable solutions to counter the budget cuts. The alternative budget was publicly presented to the Board of Regents at their May 28th meeting. These solutions include a salary cap at $150,000 for those making over $150,000, which alone will save $3.6 million. Both students and custodians are hoping that the Regents will willingly address and adopt their alternative budget. If not, students and custodians will not accept the budget cuts quietly at the Regents meeting on Thursday.

###
_______________________________________________________________________
Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition (ABC Coalition)
The Anti–Budget Cuts Coalition is a broad-based group of students, workers, and community members at University of Washington. We are committed to fighting for alternatives to layoffs, tuition increases and cuts to higher education so that the University remains accessible to students of color, working-class students, women, and queer students.

Open Letter to Charles Kennedy

The following letter was sent by student and community group, Democracy Insurgent, to Charles Kennedy, and cc'd to the Board of Regents on the day of the Regents meeting. The list of demands was presented to Charles Kennedy at the meeting for him to sign--he refused.


Democracy Insurgent
University of Washington

June 11th 2009

Charles Kennedy
Associate Vice President
Facilities Services
University of Washington

Cc: Mark Emmert, V'Ella Warren,Phyllis Wise, Gene Woodard, Craig Cole, Stanley Barer, Kristianne Blake, Jeffrey Brotman, William Gates Snr, Sally Jewell, Frederick Kiga, Constance Proctor, Herb Simon, Jean-Paul Willynck , Eric Staples, Seattle Times, Seattle PI, Real Change, KUOW, Indymedia

Dear Mr. Kennedy,

Open the Books at Facilities Services and subsidiaries!

We are writing to demand that the University of Washington Facilities Services, and its subsidiary departments, including Custodial Services, release its itemized lined budget of the past AND upcoming fiscal year to the public. We also demand that your office undergo an audit to make clear to the UW community that our tax dollars and tuition money have not gone into wasteful, unnecessary spending that appears to have benefitted only top management positions in your department.

As Associate Vice President of Facilities Services, you have awarded yourself a 30% “merit-based” pay raise over the past two years, raising your salary from $ 200, 000 to $ 260,000. In addition, there is also a $ 2.5 million surplus carried over from the last fiscal year in the Facilities budget.

These financial surpluses reflected both in your own pay raise as well as the $2.5 million carryover, are shocking at a time when your subsidiary department, Custodial Services, is declaring a 16% budget deficit. The director of Custodial Services, Gene Woodard, has claimed he has to take drastic measures to balance the budget deficit by eliminating the custodian swingshifts, laying off workers and imposing team-cleaning for custodians. We are concerned that the discrepancy may be indicative of corrupt practices in your department.

We demand to know what the criteria and process were, for the following “merit-based” pay raises:

- Associate Vice President: earned $200,000 in 2007 versus $260,000 today (a 30% increase)

-Executive Director of Campus Engineering and Operations: earned $180,000 in 2007 versus $198,000 today (a 10% increase)

-Director of Maintenance and Alterations: earned $150,000 in 2007 versus $164,000 (a 9% increase)

-Director of Transporation Services: earned $119,000 in 2007 versus $150,000 today (a 26% increase)

-Director of Custodial Services: earned $122,000 in 2007 versus $133,000 (a 9% increase)

-Director of Finance and Business Services: earned $119,000 in 2007 versus $132,000 today (an 11% increase)

-Director of Emergency Management: earned $103,000 in 2007 versus $113,000 (a 9% increase)

In contrast, custodians working for Facilities Services have not faced similar pay raises. The top-step custodian salary is a mere $31 000. In fact, with the recent budget cuts, swingshift custodians have lost their shift differentials as well as a 2.5% cost of living raise that was included in the most recent union contract. 17 custodians have also been laid off. There are currently 39 fewer custodian positions, many of which have not been replaced after retirement and firings.

Mr. Kennedy, is it possible that the money allocated for these custodial jobs by the state, have instead gone into management pay raises?

Mr. Kennedy, in times of economic crisis such as now, comparing your salary with the salary of the average custodian, which salary do you think would better withstand cuts and reductions?

In addition to dubious pay raises that management has received over the past two years, unnecessary and costly renovations to the Facilities Services buildings have been conducted.

The Physical Plant Office Building, where you and other higher-paid Facilities Services staff have offices, began undergoing renovation in January 2009. Remodel costs for this project currently total $165,000. This costly remodeling was justified under the pretext of additional “building security.” The additional security appears to be the installation of card-reader locks, as well as a receptionist desk, where someone can sit and monitor who wanders in and out of a previously open building. Ironically enough, the custodian who used to lock the doors of the Physical Plant Office Building was recently identified for layoff.

It appears that your department is resorting to staff layoffs and swingshift eliminations to address the budget shortfall. Where cuts to exorbitant pay raises, extravagant renovation expenditures, are easily in reach, and options for furloughs available, it is unclear as to why management resorts instead to targeting the most financially vulnerable workers in the university. For all its claim to maintain a diverse and multicultural university setting, it appears that the UW Facilities Services is satisfied with forcing the predominantly immigrant and people of color custodial workforce to carry the burden of the economic crisis on their backs. It also appears as if your department is unwilling to implement alternative options for fear that it sends the wrong political statement regarding the financial status of your department.

According to Marla Bradeen, Finance and Business Services analyst in Facilities Services,

Facilities Services appears committed to cutting services and personnel in order to prove the department's need for more funding. From my interpretation of comments made by management, the department may believe that cutting salaries or implementing furloughs may leave the impression that Facilities Services could easily withstand budget cuts and place our department in the position of having to absorb additional cuts in the future.

In light of such accusations of dishonesty and unaccountable money allocations in Facilities Services, we believe that an audit of your department is in order. We also demand to review the itemized line budget of your department for the past AND upcoming fiscal year so as to understand where the $2.5 million carryover would be allocated.

We look forward to hearing from you soon. You can contact us via email at d.insurg@gmail.com.

Democracy Insurgent

June 11th Rally Flyer

Open Letter to Board of Regents

On June 5, 2009, ABC Coalition sent the following letter to the Board of Regents, as well as to several press outlets. This letter was straegically planned prior to the June 11th Board of Regents meeting and accompanying rally. Stay tuned for links to press from the rally itself.

June 5, 2009


Open Letter to the University of Washington Board of Regents



On May 28th, members of the Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition presented a series of demands to the Board of Regents at the town hall meeting. These demands were summarized within an alternative Public Budget.


The ABC Coalition demanded a response to this budget by June 10th, 2009.


At the town hall, the Regents refused to engage in conversation with students, workers, and community members. They would not answer questions and were not interested in dialogue. They will be voting at the June 11th Board of Regents meeting on the budget presented by the University administration without ever having been accountable to the demands and questions of the University community.

We demand that the Board of Regents on June 11th take two hours during their meeting to discuss the budget with all those present. This would include putting all options on the table and the Board of Regents either defending the cuts that disproportionately affect women, people of color, immigrants, and workers, or rejecting the budget and requiring that the UW administration resubmit a budget based on the guidelines presented in the Public Budget. These guidelines include:

-A public statement rejecting the 25% cuts from Olympia

-Moratorium on staff and TA layoffs across UW campuses

-No tuition hikes

- Impose a salary cap on administrators making above 150,000

-Exhaust exiting “rainy day” funds and endowments before passing costs on to students and workers

-Stop closure of any library services

-Reject privatization of the university and the high-tuition model

-Use profitable athletics programs to finance educational programs

-Divert state funds for nonessential projects


Several issues in particular were highlighted at the town hall meeting on May 28th which require a response from the Board of Regents. These include:

-The Reorganization of Custodial Services: While swingshift workers have won a partial victory by postponing the shift transfer to daytime, they are still facing a loss of pay and the threat of a permanent shift transfer. Additionally, dayshift workers have been reassigned to different parts of campus, creating extra hardship including walking 45 minutes at 4 am from their designated parking lot to their place of work. Management has been making changes without regard for the well being of all custodians, and we demand an end to their heavy-handed changes.

-The Women’s Center Budget Cuts: While other programs have been cut by 12% on average, the Women’s Center's state funding has been cut in half. This poses devastating consequences to the people who access the Center’s services. This includes young women who are first generation college students, survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, nontraditional students, or women who are underrepresented in their fields of study.

-The End of the Disability Studies Program: The budget for the Disability Studies program may be cut so drastically that the program may have to cancel its scheduled classes for Fall 2009. These courses are critical for both students with disabilities and others to advocate for equal access to the University’s campus and programs, and they are very popular as they are full every quarter. Disability Studies contributes to many fields of study in both the arts and sciences, including Rehabilitation Science, Access Technology, and Law. In order for this vital program to continue to thrive, it needs sufficient funding.


While the University administration denies all such charges, it is clear that the cuts disproportionately affects people who have been historically been excluded from the University: women, students of color, people with disabilities, and immigrant, low-income workers. Drastic cuts, layoffs, or reorganizations are not happening in the most profitable departments or to the most highly paid administrators. We understand that, in fact, many highly paid administrators have received raises of 15- 30% in the past several years, and yet are not rolling back these boons of prosperous times in this time of economic crisis.


The ABC Coalition demands that the UW Board of Regents reserve time in their June 11th meeting from 1230 pm to 230 pm to discuss the budget with students, workers, and community members.


If the Board of Regents and the administration refuse to cooperate with the University community and ignore the demands of the ABC Coalition, this fight will not be over. We will continue to struggle against the undemocratic, elitist tendencies of the Board and administration until students and workers have a democratic say in the future of the University of Washington.