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.
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
Seattle Times Article
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.
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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 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.