UW Custodians
Published June 18, 2009
Dear faculty, staff, and other concerned members of the University of Washington:
You may notice changes in the custodial services to your buildings, departments, and offices such as trash left un-emptied, lack of vacuuming, or cleaning during the middle of the workday. We are writing you to both inform you of why these changes have taken place, and also to ask for your support in fighting back against changes that harm custodial staff and prevent them from doing the good work you have come to expect. Opposing these changes is a key part of fighting against budget cuts that disproportionately affect immigrants, people of color, women, people with disabilities, and queer people.
As part of a University wide move towards large numbers of management and fewer staff, as well as towards overall cuts to necessary and low to middle-income staff (such as library staff) custodial services have imposed the following cuts that have led to changes in service:
+ Lay off of 17 custodial staff which will be implemented in July 2009
+ Other vacancies not being filled through new hiring
+ Movement of around 30 custodians from swingshift to day shift effective July 1st. This will require custodians to do 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.
+move to team-cleaning, which makes custodial work slower, less effective, more monotonous, and more difficult.
Also, following the May 28th open meeting with the Board of Regents, which a number of custodial staff attended, the following changes have taken place which have led to changes in service:
+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
Additionally, managers have ordered custodians to do the following, apparently attempting to save time and money:
+No longer empty office trash cans
+Implement waterless cleaning which exposes workers, students, staff, and faculty to excessive chemicals.
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 Or continue to demand:
+ No team cleaning
+ No frequent or arbitrary building transfers
+ No management retaliation against workers and shop stewards
+ Keep ALL of the swingshift 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
You may notice changes in the custodial services to your buildings, departments, and offices such as trash left un-emptied, lack of vacuuming, or cleaning during the middle of the workday. We are writing you to both inform you of why these changes have taken place, and also to ask for your support in fighting back against changes that harm custodial staff and prevent them from doing the good work you have come to expect. Opposing these changes is a key part of fighting against budget cuts that disproportionately affect immigrants, people of color, women, people with disabilities, and queer people.
As part of a University wide move towards large numbers of management and fewer staff, as well as towards overall cuts to necessary and low to middle-income staff (such as library staff) custodial services have imposed the following cuts that have led to changes in service:
+ Lay off of 17 custodial staff which will be implemented in July 2009
+ Other vacancies not being filled through new hiring
+ Movement of around 30 custodians from swingshift to day shift effective July 1st. This will require custodians to do 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.
+move to team-cleaning, which makes custodial work slower, less effective, more monotonous, and more difficult.
Also, following the May 28th open meeting with the Board of Regents, which a number of custodial staff attended, the following changes have taken place which have led to changes in service:
+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
Additionally, managers have ordered custodians to do the following, apparently attempting to save time and money:
+No longer empty office trash cans
+Implement waterless cleaning which exposes workers, students, staff, and faculty to excessive chemicals.
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 Or continue to demand:
+ No team cleaning
+ No frequent or arbitrary building transfers
+ No management retaliation against workers and shop stewards
+ Keep ALL of the swingshift 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
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