Cleaning staff starts year shorthanded

By Anna Wilde     9/17/09 7:00pm

Over a month into the school year, it is clear the new inhabitants of Duncan College and McMurtry College are not the only ones experiencing challenges. While certain students had to deal with malfunctioning air-conditioning units and nonworking locks, certain members of the custodial staff have had to deal with changes to their workload. Due to Housing and Dining's redistribution of custodial staff from Martel College, Jones College and Brown College to McMurtry and Duncan, H&D is currently in the process of transitioning its staff to a new college dynamic.

Instead of hiring entirely new staff to clean McMurtry and Duncan, the combined eight custodial staff members from Baker College and Will Rice College were transferred to the new colleges, Vice President of H&D Mark Ditman said. In addition, one member each from Martel, Jones and Brown, colleges which had previously boasted a five-person cleaning staff, were sent to Duncan and McMurtry.

According to two members of the custodial staff, who wished to remain anonymous, one custodian at every college is assigned to clean the commons. The other workers are assigned to the college's residential areas and are charged with removing the trash and paper recycling from rooms and cleaning hall restrooms every day, cleaning suite restrooms once a week and cleaning other areas such as the Private Dining Room and college coordinator's office as needed.

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Though the new colleges require the same tasks, because the staff was not expanded, the current staff is expected to complete more work in the same amount of time.

The two anonymous sources said the custodial staff at the north colleges is not receiving a wage increase to account for this extra work. They are paid time-and-a-half wages for any overtime work they choose to do, usually on the weekends. The staff continues to receive benefits such as health insurance, life insurance and at least three weeks' paid vacation.

Optional computer and English as a Second Language classes are offered weekly to the staff, though both anonymous sources, who have frequented the computer and ESL classes in years past, said they are simply too tired during their shifts to consider attending this year.

Ditman said the salaries of staff members were unaffected by last year's 5-percent budget cut demands for university departments, but one of the anonymous sources said their managers were reluctant to hire additional staff members due to the state of the economy.

Ditman said H&D accomplished the 5-percent budget decrease by removing extraneous costs such as unused phone and fax lines and by encouraging donors to cover costs for summer projects and maintenance, as opposed to using funds from students' room-and-board fees. He estimated that cleaning staff salaries account for 12 to 14 percent of the housing side of H&D's budget.

Ditman said the situation is temporary, and that H&D did not have adequate time to assess the appropriate number of staff needed at Duncan and McMurtry.

"The opening of these buildings happened in such a compressed time period," Ditman said.

However, after being up and running for five weeks, the kinks in the colleges' cleaning routines are starting to smooth out, Facilities Supervisor of the Residential Colleges Norma Cardona said.

"The hard part is done," Cardona said. "From here, it should be, 'What else can we do to help the custodians do their jobs easier and better for students?'"

Ditman said H&D is in the process of hiring three additional staff members, from a pool of 11 candidates, to be distributed among all the colleges. In addition, H&D has the capability to hire temporary workers from an external firm if extra help is needed, such as after a public party. There are two extra workers on the H&D staff who fill in when a college's assigned cleaning staff member is sick or on vacation. He said more staff members will be hired next year in conjunction with the reopening of Baker and Will Rice.

H&D custodial staff in the north colleges first raised complaints about the increased work level during Orientation Week. A meeting between the north college staff and their managers was held last week to discuss the staff's complaints and future resolutions.

Martel President Sean McBeath said he first became aware of the custodial staff's situation last week via Martel Coordinator Maria Byrne.

"It didn't seem right for us to be asking them to do the same amount of work," McBeath said. "They're all doing four-thirds the normal workload for the same [wage]."

Neither Jones nor Brown had discussed the staff reallocations during their respective college government meetings.

Both sources expressed concerns about the manner in which H&D management was handling their complaints. They said they were chided if they complained about the amount of work and its effects on their health and stress levels, but at the same time were encouraged to maintain a positive attitude for the students to see.

Ditman and Cardona both emphasized H&D's commitment to their workers.

"You've got to create an environment where people want to stay," Ditman said.

He said people could easily choose to work somewhere else in the Rice area, though H&D boasts a noteworthy staff retention. Cardona, for example, has worked at Rice for over 20 years.

Despite having one less member on each college's cleaning staff, some students have not noticed a decline in cleanliness from previous years.

"[The staff member for our floor] is actually doing a better job than last year," Jones junior Helen Shaw said.

In an attempt to alleviate the burden placed on the custodial staff, Brown has urged its residents to take responsibility into their own hands.

"[Brown students] did have an e-mail telling us to clean up our own vomit," Brown senior Jamie Sammis said.

One anonymous member of the custodial stafff expressed concern that, due to time constraints with this increased workload, the staff felt they were sometimes unable to adequately sanitize restrooms and common areas to prevent further spread of the H1N1 flu virus.

However, Ditman emphasized that students' health has always been the primary concern of H&D, and as such, that the staff was not asked to modify their cleaning practices due to the prevalence of H1N1. He pointed to the installation of hand sanitizer pumps at "touch points" around campus, such as door handles and water fountains, as the most effective method in containing the spread of the virus.

"With a door handle, you can wipe it, but if you don't wipe it after every person [that touches it], there's no difference," Ditman said.

Cardona said staff members have been encouraged to use gloves when cleaning to protect themselves from the spread of H1N1, though most of the staff is over 25 years old, and therefore not especially susceptible to the virus. The staff's susceptibility was discussed by doctors from Methodist Hospital during an H&D training session held a week ago, which taught measures to the staff for preventing the spread of the virus.

For the past two years, H&D has implemented a scientific approach to cleaning from a "cleanology" course offered at Rice as a supplement for Facilities, Engineering and Planning and the H&D staff. The course, led by Director of Custodial and Grounds for FE&P Eusebio Franco Jr., seeks to improve the efficiency of the staff's work at the colleges. H&D is using a cleanology formula to determine the number of square feet per day to be assigned to each cleaning staff member to clean.

In addition, H&D has tried to equalize the number of staff members at each college, with four employees each at the north and south colleges and five at Duncan and McMurtry.

Before new staff members can be hired, however, the current staff will continue its duties without additional help.

Rodrigo Flores contributed to this article.

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