The Tartan

A week after The Tartan published custodians’ testimonies about contract violations, three senior executives from their management company arrived from Massachusetts and New Jersey to survey the campus. 

On Tuesday, April 2, UG2 human resources vice president Edgar Colon shook employees’ hands as they took their bleacher seats in the Studio Theater. Their union representative, Emilio Cano, also attended. 

Three chairs were lined up on the performance floor for Colon and his colleagues Oliver Vasquez, who is the human resources business partner in the tri-state area, and Carol Ambler, who is the company’s human resources manager.

It was an hour of solidarity for custodians, who backed each others’ claims and built on their colleagues’ stories. While one worker was talking, he clarified that he was speaking for himself. 

“You’re speaking for all of us,” his colleague responded. “We’re one. We’re standing together.”

Colon stood to take custodians’ questions and comments as his colleagues sat taking notes behind him. 

Custodians said that their colleague, who was assigned ten floors across three buildings, was fired after missing a bathroom. Colon asked for her name, and many custodians gave it to him simultaneously. “Hire her back,” they told Colon.

A custodian who covers housing said that he hadn’t seen his coworker hours into his Saturday shift. He called his manager to see who was covering, and his manager called his coworker. “They called her at home, on her off day,” he said. “They didn’t even know she was off.” 

The employee said no one had informed his manager that his coworker was off. The manager asked the employee if he minded covering the building. “Of course I mind,” the employee told Colon. Colon noted the manager and the circumstances. 

“That’s ongoing,” another employee said of the miscommunication, emphasizing that her colleague’s experience on Saturday was part of a larger pattern. “It doesn’t seem like there’s an actual chain of command.”

An employee who covers housing and attended the meeting on her day off told Colon that management has been violating the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between UG2 and the workers’ union, SEIU 32BJ. 

“Can you give me an example?” Colon asked.

“Okay, example number one: when there is a bid up” — an opening for someone to cover a building or shift — “we don’t even know who our leads are,” the employee said. 

According to the CBA, lead cleaners often take on a managerial role and have an hourly wage 50 cents higher than custodians. They can facilitate communication about bids and between custodians and supervisors. Custodians often learn from colleagues who the leads are, rather than the leads themselves. This creates gaps in information that custodians expect to be shared.

The employee continued, saying that when an opportunity for overtime emerges, it will often go to workers without being publicly announced. The CBA outlines an equal overtime system that rotates by seniority, beginning with employees who have worked at the university the longest and systemically going down the list. 

Another violation the employee enumerated was the uneven acceptance of paid time off. She said that office manager Teri Flinder is expected to post a calendar so workers know when their colleagues are off, but has not done so. The employee added that Flinder had declined so many custodians’ requests for time off that a disproportionate amount of people were off during winter cleaning, a time when staffing is critical. 

She said that employees had been unfairly taxed on their bonus, including $170 that had been taken for the FICA tax — which is federally required to be split evenly between employer and employee. 

One custodian said that even if the expense was relatively small at an individual level, carried across more than 160 employees, it added up for UG2. 

“Either they’re in trouble with the feds,” or the company should reimburse employees, a worker said of UG2.

Colon shook his head. “That’s the impression you have,” he said. “Let me follow up on that.”

Custodians, who are paid $21.40 per hour, said they are being asked to do project work without proper pay, which would be $21.90 per hour. 

They also said that supervisors should not share why employees request sick leave (“That’s a HIPAA violation,” a worker pointed out), that managers need to respect employees, and that employees have received punitive points without explanation. 

When one employee told an account manager that workers were receiving unexplained points, he told her that employees should receive notice of each point they accumulate. “If you don’t get a paper, you don’t get a point,” he told her. If that was true, she told Colon, most of her colleagues would not have points, because they only received cumulative totals, not individual notices. 

Colon told her he would look into her observations and asked if anyone had more input.

“I have a question,” a custodian responded. “What was your assessment of us before you showed up? Everything smooth?”

Colon told the custodian that UG2 “absolutely had a rocky start” at Carnegie Mellon, including “contingencies of employment that we had to be compliant of that we were perhaps not in compliance of.” 

He said that the management team serving the university today is different from the one serving the university when UG2 first arrived. 

“I knew that we continued to have issues,” Colon said. He told employees he was on campus to address them. “Now, can anyone talk about anything good?” 

The room erupted with dissent. Many said “no.” One employee said she is expected to eat in a closet because the break room space has been cut. Her colleague said he was grateful to have a job and to put food on his table, but he came home from work exhausted. 

“I’m tired, too,” Colon said. 

Workers responded that his exhaustion did not match theirs. They said they arrive home physically and mentally depleted, and that the job is taking an unsustainable toll on them. 

“We just need more people here,” a custodian said. 

“That’s the bottom line,” her colleague added. 

Custodians said most of the violations would resolve if there were enough workers to cover campus. “If we get enough people to cover runs that’d alleviate a lot of the issues,” an employee told Colon.

Some custodians said that after The Tartan published their complaints, they received threats from managers and an increase in work orders that seemed “nitpicky.”

Colon assured workers that they are protected by a non-retaliation policy and encouraged them to speak up when they feel wronged. Of retaliation at UG2, Colon said, “That’s not who we are.” He added that he would have preferred for workers to have brought their complaints to management rather than the school newspaper. 

“With this meeting, will there be a resolution or are we just talking?” one employee asked.

Colon said he, Vasquez, and Ambler would summarize and share what workers discussed at the town hall with Carnegie Mellon’s site leader and with Colon’s boss. He said the discussion offered an “opportunity to improve.” 

A worker told Colon that might not be enough. “While you’re talking, we’ve been here for 15 months,” he said of unfair work expectations. “We need help.” 

Colon did not respond to The Tartan’s questions about the length of the executives’ visit and the actions they plan to take.