Facilities workers concerned for jobs as UA considers outsourcing

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/FOX24) — Facilities management employees at the University of Arkansas are concerned about their jobs right now as the school is considering outsourcing their jobs to a private third-party company.

Facilities management employees do essential jobs on the Fayetteville campus. They are the people cleaning everything from the classrooms to the bathrooms. Construction service employees provide carpentry, electricity, plumbing and other services for buildings. Razorback Recycling workers collect trash and sort it for recycling.

They work all hours of the day and night, whether it’s a quiet night at the library or a bustling day in Old Main.

“We all are working as hard as we can and doing what we can,” said Megan Maples, a custodian who works in the library.

“I know administrators have often called the custodial crew and the grounds grew the backbone of the University of Arkansas,” said Hershel Hartford, President of the UA Fayetteville Education Association Local 965 union.

It’s a backbone that workers fear could be removed. Currently, all these workers are employees of the university and, therefore, the state. The university is considering bringing in a private company to run the department.

“It was devastating. I almost cried,” said one facilities employee who wanted to remain anonymous. “That ruins everything that I thought I was going to do.”

This employee said she found out in January through an email she got on her phone while at work.

“My coworkers hadn’t read it yet, and I was like, ‘Did you guys read this? Like, they’re going to be outsourcing us.’ And everybody started like freaking out. What are we going to do?” she said.

The university sent out a letter to employees saying it was bringing in a representative from SSC Services for Education to conduct a review of the university’s facilities operations.

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According to its website, SSC manages custodial services, grounds management, facilities management and construction project management for higher education institutions and K-12 school districts.

Hartford said outsourcing is something they’ve seen on campus before.

“It happened with food workers years ago, they’ve done it with our bookstore. They’ve done it with our post office, with our copy center,” Hartford said. “Whose job is next on the privatization of a public institution?”

SSC currently manages the facilities operations for Rogers Public Schools.

“We’ve been working with SSC for over 13 years,” said Jason Ivester with RPS. “We’re very satisfied with this partnership. They provide a beneficial service to our district.”

Fayetteville Public Schools decided to outsource its facilities operations to SSC in January 2018, but the school board voted to end that contract early in July 2019.

“I reached out to a teacher I know and I asked about this and they said ‘Look, it was an issue of trust,'” said Michael Pierce, a history professor at the University of Arkansas. “They didn’t know these people that were in the classrooms, that were in the offices. There was high turnover there.”

Pierce said the Fayetteville School Board had to pay thousands of dollars to purchase the equipment back from SSC.

“It was a costly mistake by several public schools and it’s one that I hope the University of Arkansas doesn’t repeat,” he said.

The university said it is doing this assessment of campus services to ensure fiscal responsibility and efficiency.

In a Freedom of Information Act request, the university told KNWA/FOX24 that it anticipates spending $14,556,430 on custodial services for facilities management, the union, housing and athletics in Fiscal Year 2024.

It anticipates spending $3,328,785 on grounds.

KNWA/FOX24 asked the university for any documents that detail how much it will cost for SSC to take over this department. The university said no documents with this information exist as it is currently still in the assessing phase.

“While we recognize finances, and we recognize the importance of being fiscally responsible, we think the university needs to choose people over spreadsheets,” said Hartford.

The university said it has approximately 200 grounds and custodial staff.

“Every employee matters,” said Hartford to a packed room at Foghorn’s in Fayetteville on February 22.

Local 965 hosted a union meeting and invited the custodial members to attend and voice their concerns, even if they weren’t members of the union.

“Local 965 was founded in the 1960s,” said Hartford. “Its original founders were some of the people that we’re supporting right now. They were the people who worked in the labor shop and in the custodial areas. Later on, they added food workers. Beyond that, they added faculty staff, and we’ve added grad students who are working at the university.”

Maples attended the meeting to gather information for her night crew coworkers who weren’t able to make it.

“I also came because I do love my job. I enjoy working for the university,” she said. “I would like to not be contracted out. So whatever we can do to make that not happen is obviously our goal.”

In a release about the changes posted on the university’s website on February 29, it says if the decision is made to move forward with external contracting, there will be no expected reduction in existing staff, no expected reduction in pay and comparable benefits to the plan provided to employees currently.

“You can promise to hire our people. That’s great, but we live in a right-to-work state and those people can be fired at will at any point in time once they are under a new company,” said Hartford.

The employees KNWA/FOX24 talked to say it’s much more than just their job security on the line. Several feel like their dreams and the dreams of their loved ones are at risk of being thrown away.

“I was planning on going to school. I get a 90% discount,” said the anonymous employee. “I can finally afford to go to school.”

According to the university’s website, every university employee gets a 90% discount on tuition and their spouses and eligible dependents get 50% off.

“If you talk to anybody on the custodial shift, more often than not, they took this job for them or their children to get a tuition discount,” said Maples.

The Feb. 29 news release from the university says that if external contracting happens, there will be “continued university tuition discounts for existing staff members and/or their spouses and children who are already receiving these discounts.”

It’s unclear what will happen to these employees in the future with this benefit.

“If my daughter decides that she wants to go, I still got like nine years, but if she decided she wanted to go, I would stay,” said the anonymous employee.

“I had a dream for my kids to go to college,” said one employee who attended the union meeting. “It was really hard for me because I’m from Mexico, so for me, it was a big difference. My kid graduates in May. Now he’s asking me, ‘Am I not going to be able to go to the U of A?’ and I have to say, ‘I don’t know, baby.'”

Pierce has been a professor at the U of A since 2001. He is also concerned with the employees being outsourced.

“Right now, I trust every person who works on the custodial staff,” he said. “I see them every day. I say ‘Hi.’ We talk about our kids. They are our friends.”

He remembered running into a custodial worker in Old Main right after his son was born and that worker being the first person he told about the birth.

He said he loves the personal touches the custodial workers in the building take time to do. Outside the custodial office in Old Main, he showed us how the workers decorate the space for the holidays. When KNWA/FOX24 interviewed him in late February, the Valentine’s Day decorations were still up.

He said normally, the next day after the holiday, the decorations are down and the next holiday starts to come up. He said Easter decorations normally show up after Valentine’s Day. He guessed that with all the news of potentially being outsourced weighing on them, they may not have had the energy to switch the decorations.

Pierce is also a parent to a student at the university. He said outsourcing could cause safety and security concerns.

“These privatized companies rely on heavy turnover of low-wage workers, and I just wouldn’t feel comfortable with my kid in the dorm with my stuff in my office when these high-turnover workers have access to it,” he said.

In the letter sent by the university, it says three outcomes could happen from this assessment: there could be no change at all, they could adopt a hybrid approach that affects some functions but not others or a full external management that transitions all functions.

On February 27, SSC Services for Education posted a custodial director job for Fayetteville. The job description says this person will provide support for new and existing SSC accounts in K-12 and higher education settings.

Many are hoping the university decides not to outsource.

“We’re people. We have lives. We have plans,” said the anonymous employee.

“The chancellor, if he wants to make the University of Arkansas the employer of choice in Northwest Arkansas, that has to include all employees from the bottom all the way to the top,” said Pierce.

“A community is only as strong as the bonds between those people in the community,” said Hartford. “We want to keep our bonds. We want to keep our family at the University of Arkansas.”

It’s unclear how quickly a decision will be made by the university based on the assessment.

In a statement about the situation, the university said, “Our grounds and custodial employees are vital to the U of A and we know they care deeply about our campus and community. The ongoing assessment is designed to help us continue to provide these core services to our growing campus consistently and efficiently moving forward. The assessment will allow the university to make a decision to continue to manage these services internally or to partially or fully move to external contracting of grounds and custodial services. Our responsibility is to make the best decision we can for university operations as a whole, including for our employees, students, and visitors.”

Local 965 is hosting a rally and a march on March 16 to show support for the facilities workers. The rally will happen at 2 p.m. at St. Martin’s Episcopal Center. The group will then march to the Administration Building.

KNWA/FOX24 reached out to SSC Services for Education multiple times for comment but did not hear back.

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