Photo: Jake Glass and Elizabeth Pankova
Some of the most essential members of this campus community are some of its least visible. Each morning, long before students and professors begin to walk the halls of Georgetown’s buildings, members of the maintenance and facilities staff work to prepare the campus spaces for their use that day. Without these workers, Georgetown’s day-to-day functioning would cease.
In light of the facilities and maintenance workers’ ongoing contract negotiations with the University and several recent incidents of disrespect towards these members of the Georgetown community, this Editorial Board urges the University and its students to engage with the stories of its workers, support their campaign for higher wages, and acknowledge their important contributions to our campus community.
For all the important work facilities and maintenance staff does on campus, they are continually some of the most disrespected members of the Georgetown community. Staff members have to deal with long hours, uncooperative and sometimes abusive management, and unreasonable, backbreaking assignments. Most recently this disrespect has come in the form of understaffing in various campus buildings. This places an undue strain on workers. According to current staffers, Georgetown has not hired any additional workers to cover the work in the Healey Family Student Center (HFSC) since the building opened two years ago. In an email to the Voice, University Media Relations Manager Ryan King wrote that the area was covered by maintenance and facilities staff, who were reassigned to other areas during the construction of the HFSC, and returned once the construction had ended. Yet, according to some of the workers assigned to the HFSC, these assignments are in addition to their work in other areas of campus. It’s unclear whether the space was ever regularly cleaned before construction began; it was a space students generally avoided due to its sorry state.
In the same email, King acknowledged that they still have not filled the ten new facilities staff positions needed for Arrupe Hall and the Thompson Athletic Center. In failing to properly fill the need in these spaces, the University continues to place an undue burden on the current staff, and ensures that the important work integral to the operation of our University does not get completed.
Perhaps the largest example of the mistreatment of campus workers came during last January’s blizzard. Many facilities and maintenance employees stayed on campus overnight, forced to sleep wherever there was space, all without overtime pay, just so that campus could continue running through the storm.
Transgressions like these should not repeated by the University or tolerated by its students.
We believe that the University must hire new staff to cover maintenance and facilities for Arrupe Hall, the Thompson Athletic Center, and the Healey Family Student Center. By failing to provide an adequate workforce in these areas, the University does a disservice to both its employees and students. Employees are overworked, and are often asked to maintain large areas on campus. Because of this, not all of the work can get finished, and students, faculty, and other community members use suboptimal campus spaces. Students often complain about the lack of responsiveness to work orders that they place, and the blame for this can be directly linked to a lack of staff within the maintenance department.
We also believe it is the job of students to stand up for workers on this campus, from whom so much is benefited. This Editorial Board calls on all students to contact administrators to demand that worker justice is achieved on campus.
As such, we believe that students should be allowed to be present in negotiations between the University and SEIU Local 1199. Earlier this month, members of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee were denied access to the ongoing negotiations between the University and the workers’ union. It is the position of this Editorial Board that these students should be present in these meetings, as their presence increases the transparency of the process as well as shows a sign of student support for campus workers. In refusing to allow Georgetown students to be present for negotiations, the University is unable to be held accountable for their actions, many of which have prolonged the current contract battle.
The policies that this Editorial Board endorses are ones aimed to better the working, living, and studying conditions of all members of the Georgetown community. In making stronger efforts toward respecting campus workers, the University would better fulfill its mission to promote Jesuit ideals, especially those outlined in the Just Employment Policy. Georgetown has the opportunity to become a model employer with their current negotiations with union workers. Doing so will ensure that these rights are protected in the future and that students and faculty can live and work in environments that are as clean and safe as possible.
