Students Against Sweatshops confront Simpson

Members of UB Students Against Sweatshops confronted President John B. Simpson outside of his Capen Hall office on Thursday demanding to know the status of on-campus subcontracted custodial staff as UB continues a three-year transition to unionized labor.

Simpson told the group of nearly 20 students that while he would address the matter with the group at a later date, but that he did not then have the time to talk immediately, according to UBSAS members.

The president departs on a nine-day trip to Asia along with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and other federal officials Friday as part of a delegation that will meet with leaders of government, business and academics throughout China, Japan and Korea to discuss education and express U.S. interest in enrolling international students.

"We understand that he's hard to get meetings with, but there's also a timetable of January 1st, when they're going to begin firing workers. We feel that this can't wait," said Brenden Stepien, a member of UBSAS who helped plan the gathering.

Stepien said that meetings arranged between UBSAS and Associate Vice President for University Facilities Michael Dupre were "not productive," and that the group was preparing for the first custodial contracts to expire early next year.

"They're fine discussions but they aren't going anywhere," Stepien said, adding that a meeting request with UBSAS had been granted by Simpson, but that such meetings "take a very, very long time to happen."

"The immediacy of this action was necessary," Stepien said. "Because in January workers will begin to lose their jobs."

Members of UBSAS held a rally last year celebrating the announcement that UB would transition from outside contracted labor to unionized state services.

According to Dupre, the decision to switch had been part of a planning process lasting the past two years and included many factors, sometimes including worker productivity and dependability.

"For about 13 years now, we've been outsourcing custodial services at the university," Dupre said. "Sometimes the contractors have performed really well, other times they've performed really poorly."

Dupre attributed workers' previously low wages to the competitive nature of the contracts, and said that easily identifiable areas of campus that were not being properly taken care of was the true motivating factor for those in the decision-making process.

"Students have a concern about the well-being and wages of these employees, and we do too," Dupre said. "But next to those concerns, there's been a high turnover rate for some of these (subcontracted) employees including theft, service deficiencies...things of that nature. We're looking to reverse that trend."

Stepien said that while the payment of a "living wage" was a step in the right direction, the termination of experienced workers was not.

Subcontracted custodial staff would then have to apply for new positions and some may possibly be laid off. According to Stepien, this is unfair and illogical.

"We want all of the workers that had these jobs to be given the opportunity to go to the union jobs," Stepien said. "They're trained for them. They're experienced workers that have done this, and we believe that they should have their jobs in this changeover."

Dupre explained that while UB plans to be fair in the hiring process, the school might not hire back all subcontracted workers.

"We believe, hopefully a good number of those people working for the contractors will come work for us and have a higher wage," he said.

According to Dupre, a high annual turnover rate has made it so there are very few subcontracted workers with a long work history at UB.

"Realistically, there's enough of turnover with this group that the people that who were here a year ago are not here today," Dupre said. "There have been a few that have stayed for 3 or 4 years and we hope to hire them...we are going to pay a very good wage and have a very good benefit package. We are going to hire accordingly."