nothin Clark: Outsourcing Has Worked | New Haven Independent

Clark: Outsourcing Has Worked

Melissa Bailey Photo

Shawn Goodhue, one of 162 new non-union, part-time workers.

Nearly a year after the New Haven’s schools got rid of a third of their unionized custodians, privatization has produced cleaner buildings and $1 million in overtime savings, argued Chief Operating Officer Will Clark. One laid-off custodian warned the changes come at a human cost.

Clark made the case in a tour Wednesday of two city schools — one that has been privatized entirely, and another that’s running on a hybrid union-private

The tour came about 10 months after an arbitration decision paved the way for the school district to privatize a third of its unionized custodial workforce.

The city removed the union presence from a half-dozen schools, including three large high schools, Hill Regional Career, Wilbur Cross and James Hillhouse.

At other schools, it has kept two full-time union workers, supplemented by new part-time, non-union workers from a Cleveland-based company called GCA Services Group, Inc.

The city’s school custodial staff now includes 100 unionized workers in AFSCME Local 287; 162 part-time workers in GCA; and five full-time custodians who work for AFB, a Bridgeport-based company hired to manage the city school buildings.

The new hybrid model allows the school district much more flexibility, leading to cleaner schools with fewer worker hours, argued Clark.

The school system is on track to save $1 million in overtime costs, and a total of $4 million per year in total cleaning costs, thanks to the new contract, Clark said. That’s on track with the projections on which the city budget is based, he said. 

Not everyone is happy with the changes. A group of custodians disgruntled with the new system is gunning to topple the custodial union leadership. The group argues that the new system places too much burden on unionized workers, takes away overtime pay, and holds them responsible for the work of the privatized part-timers, said custodian Rafael Crespo.

The union opposed privatization because it was putting gainfully employed custodians out of work and replacing them with part-time workers with no benefits, lower pay and no rights on the job. That is never good for economic recovery and renewal, whether it’s in New Haven or anywhere else,” said AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman. However, the union leadership supported the partial privatization plan because it kept 100 union jobs.

COO Clark and Joe “Pepe” Barbarotta of AFB.

Clark Wednesday showed off two buildings he said have been transformed under the new model.

At Career High School, Clark was met at the door not by a unionized worker, but by Billy DiStefano, a head custodian employed by AFB. DiStefano’s job title is building manager.” That means he’s the main point-person for running the 160,000-square-foot building, which serves over 700 kids.

Under the old union contract, seven full-time workers cleaned Career High, Clark said. Now there are only two full-time workers, DiStefano and an assistant who works the night shift. Seven part-time workers from GCA help him keep the building clean.

All told, the new cleaning team at Career represents two fewer employees in terms of man hours, Clark calculated. DiStefano makes $50,000 plus benefits working for AFB. The workers get paid local minimum wage, which was just raised to $14.67 for city contractors, and no benefits.

Shawn Goodhue (pictured at the top of this story), one of those GCA workers, cleans up during lunchtime five days a week, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Tuesday, he seized a moment between lunch waves to toss out a round of trash. Later, he would sweep and mop.

Goodhue lives off of Whalley Avenue. He was one of many New Haveners, many of them out of work, who lined up last December to score new part-time jobs that opened up as the school system cut back its unionized workforce. He said the part-time gig is the only job he has.

Unlike the union workers, Goodhue isn’t guaranteed work every day. If schools have a half day or are closed for Election Day, he may not be called to work. On the flip side, he could be called in for extra work if Career has a basketball game at night. 

Clark said the new system is more flexible and efficient. There used to be a groundsman who focused only on the school grounds, and a pool guy who just tended to the pool. Now DiStefano checks the chemicals in the pool every day. And he keeps up with the leaves and the lawn with the help of his part-time crew. The GCA workers go where they’re needed, when they’re needed.

We can make them do anything,” Clark said.

As a result, Career is much cleaner than it was last year, Clark said.

Principal Madeline Negrón, who wasn’t at Career last year, said she has heard good reviews from her staff.

They feel the building is cleaner this year. They seem to be pleased,” she said.

He said he doesn’t blame the unionized custodians who worked there last year. We weren’t staffed properly to the way it was used,” he said.

For example, Career used to have seven full-time workers cleaning all summer. This summer, the crew did minimal cleaning while summer programs took place. Then, the last week and a half before school started, AFB brought in an army” of guys to strip and wax floors. The guys came from the union and from GCA.

Rigid Rules Bypassed

Unionized workers were freed up to take part in that army, Clark said, because they weren’t lingering at other schools. At a school like Worthington Hooker, which had no summer programs, custodians cleaned the school early in the summer, then locked it up and helped out on other assignments — something they weren’t able to do under previous union rules.

Under the new contract, if your building is clean, we don’t need you sitting there doing nothing,” Clark said. The workers can move somewhere else.

With the newfound flexibility, AFB rounded up a hybrid crew of union and non-union workers to redo 17 gym floors over the summer, Clark said. The district used to subcontract that work. Keeping it in-house saved about $50,000, he estimated.

In a brief tour through Career, DiStefano showed off a sparkling gym floor, a clean pool, and shiny hallways. A glimpse into a bathroom revealed some ongoing challenges: Students had again ripped the soap dispenser off the wall.

And graffiti was scrawled on a bathroom door. DiStefano said he has ordered a special bonding agent that will help his crew paint over the graffiti. Clark said the school system has a new system of tracking these problems and providing information on vandalism back to school leaders so they can address them.

Schools that still have a union presence are also cleaner than they were last year, Clark argued. For a case in point, he rolled up to Clinton Avenue School, a K‑8 in Fair Haven.

There, he met Dominic Piscopo, the building manager,” aka head custodian. Piscopo works for Local 287. With 10 years on the job, he’s an example of a less veteran worker who was able to jump into a leadership position he never would have had with previous union rules, Clark said.

When the new contract took effect in January, the district re-classified all the custodians’ jobs. All the custodians had to reapply for one of four jobs. They sat down for interviews. They were judged on three factors: job knowledge, attendance, and disciplinary record.

Some workers were surprised to find out that seniority didn’t factor into whether they were deemed eligible for the job. Some veteran custodians with decades on the job didn’t make the cut, in some cases because of absenteeism or disciplinary problems. Fifteen got laid off in July as the schools cut back the number of unionized jobs.

The hallways at Clinton Avenue School sparkled.

Piscopo, who had a good record, had been a night crew leader at Hooker School. He got chosen as one of 38 new building managers,” the top custodians in charge of individual schools. In the previous system of seniority, he never would have been allowed that promotion.

He jumped the line, but he jumped an archaic, illogical line” based on old union rules, Clark argued. In his new job, Piscopo has much more responsibility. He has to change filters on heating systems, deal with computers, and serve as the main point-person for the principal on all matters related to the school building and grounds. When he gets off his shift at 4 p.m., he directs the night crew on what to clean.

The four new jobs pay as follow: Building managers make $24.64 per hour; assistant building managers $21.96; floaters” $19.72; and drivers $22.20.

Enter The Floater”

Most days, Piscopo works alone during the day. Sometimes, a man named Bruce Barros, Sr. shows up to help him out.

Barros (pictured) is a floater.” That’s a new job created in January by the new union contract.

In the past, if a union worker was absent, the district had to pay another full-time worker overtime to fill in for the shift. Because of the high rate of absenteeism — on any given day, 25 percent of custodians were absent, according to the city — the school board had to pay a lot of overtime hours.

Now, if someone’s absent, the school system calls Barros or one of his eight fellow floaters. Barros never knows where he’ll be on a given day.

They call me in the morning and I show up at a school,” Barros said. He works full-time, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

On Wednesday, he helped Piscopo with the lunch wave and tossed the trash out behind the school.

The use of floaters, combined with the layoffs of some more truant workers, has led to a significant decrease in overtime costs, Clark said. So has the use of part-timers: Now, instead of hiring workers overtime to staff special events such as basketball games, the schools can use part-timers from GCA.

The new system led to significant savings, Clark said. The Floyd Little Field House at Hillhouse used zero overtime hours over the summer, saving $21,632, he said. The number of summer overtime hours across the city dropped dramatically from 9,690 to 1,956, a savings of $247,000 between the summer of 2012 and 2011, Clark said.

The school system is on track to save $1 million per year due to overtime hours alone, Clark said.

Shouldering The Blame?

Melissa Bailey Photo

Not everyone’s happy about that switch.

Crespo (pictured), who got laid off June 30, said he talks regularly to fellow custodians on the job. The new system places too much burden on the building managers, he said. They’re holding our guys accountable for GCA guys’ behavior.”

Clark applauded the savings earned during days when schools are closed, such as the Friday after Thanksgiving. But Crespo said those savings come at a human cost.

Of course you’re going to save money, because you’re leaving the work up to a couple of people,” Crespo said. They pull out everyone from GCA, and leave all the work to our people.” Building managers like Piscopo are doing two to three jobs on one salary.”

What’s more, the union workers aren’t getting the overtime pay they used to count on, Crespo argued.

He said he’s part of a disgruntled supporters rallying around a new candidate, Warren Spanner, in a Dec. 14 election for union president. Spanner is running against President Robert Montuori on a slate of custodians unhappy with the new privatized system. Crespo said custodians backing Spanner can’t change the contract, but they want to start filing more grievances. So far, the union has not filed any grievances about the new system, according to Clark.

Montuori, who couldn’t be reached for this story (he was on vacation), supported a proposed labor contract that called for privatizing a third of the workforce. He argued it was as a better option than wholesale privatization. His membership, however, rejected that contract—then got a very similar deal through binding arbitration.

Click here to read the new union contract.

AFSCME spokesman Dorman said his union never wanted to privatize school cleaning, but union members are doing the best they can given the system arbitrators handed down.

Our members are tremendously committed and caring employees. They want their schools to be safe and functional and clean and fully operational. They care about their jobs,” Dorman said.

If the schools are looking cleaner this year, Dorman said, it reinforces the importance and the value of having a unionized workforce cleaning the New Haven schools.”

Clark argued that though the privatized workers don’t have job security or benefits, they can get good training at an entry-level job in a growing industry. He said the new system shows there’s a place for privatized workers — and for a core of unionized workers like Piscopo who take ownership of their school and support the part-time workers who just come in to clean.”

After touring visitors around his building, Piscopo got right back to work. He jumped in the seat of a battery-powered auto scrubber and tackled the detritus left on the cafeteria floor from the final lunch wave. The machine can clean 34,000 square feet per hour and uses 70 percent less water than conventional scrubbers, said Clark, so the floor would be dry in no time.

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