Pleased with Fusco, Yale extends 'experiment'

JULIA TIERNAN/YH CLEANING UP: Berkeleyites living in the Swing Space rave about the custodial service Yale has subcontracted through Fusco Management.

On Sat., Jan.30, when the head of this year's Yale Model United Nations Conference, Kerem Turunç, SM '00, reported a blackout in Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC) 101, ISS employees responded to the call within seven minutes. "We timed them," Turunç said. "They were very helpful. They were very nice."

Turunç didn't use a stopwatch to time how long it took a Yale custodial worker to clean up a mess in a William L. Harkness Hall bathroom at last year's conference, but he remembers that the response was significantly slower. "It probably took an hour and a half," he said.

Turunç's experiences are just one example of the difference in response time between ISS employees--hired through Yale's subcontracting deal with Fusco Management to maintain LC and the Swing Space--and Yale's regular custodial and grounds workers. Berkeleyites are also singing the praises of ISS service. "The Swing Space is always clean. I don't think I've ever seen a smudge
anywhere," Jenny Bottomly, BK '99, said. "There's
definitely a noticeable difference from what it used to be like in Berkeley. I remember that there was always dust collecting there."

For the first time, such a comparison can be made--but it's not the last. At the beginning of the academic year, Yale signed a contract with Fusco to manage the maintenance of both Boyd and LC. Fusco, in turn, hired workers from ISS, a maintenance company. Last week Yale renewed its contract with Fusco, so ISS will continue to clean these areas next year.

The University maintains that the outsourcing is in line with its 1996 contract with local Federation of University Employees unions 34 and 35. By experimenting with outside workers, Yale is taking advantage of a clause in this agreement that allows it to subcontract some labor as long as no union workers are fired. "The whole idea was to learn from other firms how they go about performing and managing their work," Kemel Dawkins, vice president of facilities, explained.

But the University's "experiment" has Local 35 workers up in arms. They suspect Yale's real goal is to destroy the union's power. The union's contract expires in 2002, and the workers don't want to relive the process they went through three years ago.

"Yale tried to break up our unit in 1996. We can't believe they won't do it again," Local 35 President Bob Proto said. "It's our priority to make sure Yale does not create another tier of workers who are getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits than the union workers are." According to Proto, Yale custodians get paid between $10.53 and $11.53 per hour, while the Fusco subcontractees make between $7.53 and $8.53.

Dawkins denied that Yale has any intention of weakening the union. Rather, he says Yale wants to cooperate with Local 35 to come up with a more efficient system for dividing labor. The crucial diference between how Fusco and Yale manage their workers lies in the flexibility of their work descriptions. "It would be nice if the descriptions of the workers were simpler," Ezra Stiles Master Paul Fry said. "Until you really learn to understand the system, it's not clear what a custodial worker and groundskeeper can and can't do."

The question, then, is: should Yale students and faculty continually have to deal with a inefficient system? Roberto Meinrath, deputy director of facilities, doesn't think so. "We really need to sit down with the union and exchange ideas about how to achieve more efficiency," he said. "The way it is now, a custodian who works inside a building cannot pick up a piece of paper lying outside, and a mason fixing a wall will have to then call a painter to paint it. It takes twice as many people and twice as long to complete a job."

Still, Proto maintains that having a jack-of-all-trades kind of employee can be dangerous. "It's just not safe or efficient for a plumber to be playing with electrical wires or an electrician to be fixing your sink," he said. "The employees should have licenses in their skills."

But Proto indicated that he is willing to renegotiate the job description clauses in the union contract. "We're always open-minded if the University has a credible recommendation," he said.

Despite Yale's checkered record with its unions, Dawkins is optimistic about improvements. "I look forward to sitting down with the leadership of the union," he said. "The goal is to improve the quality. We recognize that we can make Yale's cleanup more efficient."

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