Privatizing school custodial services would cut janitor salaries in half, perhaps forcing their families onto food stamps and state-funded health care.
That’s one of the conclusions drawn by a study released on Thursday by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
The study, entitled “Pushing Working Families into Poverty: Assessing the New Haven Plan to Privatize the Public Schools’ Custodial Services,” was performed by Assistant Research Professor Jeannette Wicks-Lim. Read it here.
Will Clark, chief operating officer for New Haven Public Schools, hailed the study as proof that privatizing custodial services would save the city money.
The report comes at a time of heated battle between organized labor and city administration in New Haven. While negotiating 11 new union contracts, the mayor is seeking concessions on ballooning pension and health care benefits to help close yawning multimillion-dollar projected budget gaps in current and future fiscal years.
The mayor last month laid of dozens of city workers, including 16 cops, and his proposed $475 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes the privatization of school custodial services.
That would have disastrous consequences for New Haven’s custodians and their families, the new report concludes.
The PERI report was done at the request of Council 4 AFSCME, which includes the custodians union, said Wicks-Lim. “They did ask for it and funded it, but the research I did was all my own,” she said. “I did it as an independent researcher.”
No one at Council 4 AFSCME “exercised any authority over the final contents of the study,” Wicks-Lim writes in her acknowledgements.
“It’s a pretty straightforward report,” Wicks-Lim said. She simply looked at the current contract, compared it to a proposed contract, looked at payroll documents from the last couple of years and “just crunched the numbers.”
What she found, according to a press release, is that the average custodian would see a 54 percent decrease in total household income under the proposed new contract, from $68,000 to $31,000.
“At this level of household income, the average school custodian and her/his family would be eligible for subsidized programs such as SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) and HUSKY (Connecticut’s Medicaid program),” the release states. “In effect, state and federal taxpayers would end up subsidizing the low pay of the private contract by covering the cost of basic necessities that are currently paid for through the workers’ salaries.
“By privatizing these jobs, the city would effectively force the 186 lower-to-middle-income NHPS custodians and their families to bear the burden for fully 19 percent of the city’s projected budget deficit. Yet, these families represent less than one-half of one-percent of the 46,000 households in New Haven.”
According to Wicks-Lim: The new contract would reduce average wages from $20.90 to $12.50 per hour, replace 186 full-time positions with mostly part-time workers, “eliminate health insurance benefits, overtime pay and bonuses for all part-time workers,” and end retirement benefits for all workers.
On Thursday, public schools COO Clark released a statement attacking the provenance of the report, and saying that privatization will increase efficiency and save the city money.
“This study, which was solicited by the union, confirms that outsourcing janitorial services will produce significant savings for the schools and the city,” Clark wrote.
Given the current budget situation, the city is forced to find ways to cut costs, Clark said. “Teachers, administrators, carpenters and other tradesmen have all agreed to concessions,” but janitors have not, Clark said.
Custodians earn an average of $85,000 per year, including pension health and workman’s compensations, Clark said. “This exceeds by three to four times the private sector cost for providing this service. This is simply not sustainable for the school district and the city.
“Outsourcing of public school janitorial services is commonplace nationwide and will produce necessary savings for a sustainable budget with increased efficiency.”
Know what else would save the city money?
Cutting the vast waste at the top of NHPS. Start by slashing Mayo's $226K (plus perks) salary, then the pay of his top aides (all of whom make over $100K) and the many lit and math coaches (most of whom do not work classrooms).
Teachers are in the trenches daily, helping students, many of whom have extreme social, emotional and academic needs. Custodians work very hard to maintain the schools, which are regularly littered and vandalized due to an already bad shortage of staff in schools.
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