Dirty areas at Pitt worsened by time constraints on workers

Used Starbucks coffee cups and old pink and yellow-colored leaflets regularly grace the gray… Used Starbucks coffee cups and old pink and yellow-colored leaflets regularly grace the gray cement stairs of lecture hall G-24 in the Cathedral of Learning. A quarter inch of dust along the painted windowsills keeps company with the littered floor.

And the rooms didn’t look much cleaner in the William Pitt Union at 10 a.m. on Jan. 31 to Facilities Management custodial supervisor David J. Gieraltowski.

After walking through the stairwell from the ground floor to the first floor, Gieraltowski found custodian James D. “Max” Hamer’s work insufficient, telling management that he found food debris, dust on ledges and lights and coffee stains in Hamer’s assigned area, according to the suspension letter sent to Hamer from Facilities Management’s Custodial Services.

Hamer had been working on his own assignments, cleaning the stairwells and the fifth floor that morning, as well as cleaning for another employee who was off for the day because of the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But because of the incident, assistant manager Nathaniel McCoy suspended Hamer for three unpaid work days, Feb. 13, 14 and 15.

Hamer then filed a grievance form against unfair labor practices with the union on Feb. 19, stating that he had been “suspended for substandard work while others are not disciplined for the same offense.”

SEIU3 could not confirm that they had received the paperwork, and Gieraltowski said he was not allowed to talk to The Pitt News.

“I didn’t clean them as well as I should because I was doing two areas,” Hamer said. “I’m supposed to have eight hours of work. If I do my job, I won’t have time to do anyone else’s work.”

Hamer has been employed at Pitt for 10 years this June, and he said he has never received a specific work assignment in writing.

But many cleaners have.

Employee assignment sheets were issued to cleaners as recently as Jan. 23, 2006. The sheets differ in job descriptions for each employee and detail each day’s work assignments over a five-day, 40-hour period. A full eight hours of work is itemized for every workday.

On a typical night for a custodian assigned to the ground floor and basement of the Cathedral of Learning, the worker must clean 11 classrooms, seven stairwells, six computer labs, five janitor closets, two restrooms, two common areas and one office, according to one employee assignment sheet.

In each assigned room or space, the cleaner should dust, clean tabletops, clean shelves with Pledge, wipe the walls if they are dirty, clean glass, run the vacuum cleaner and empty trash, according to custodial shop steward Howard W. “Buddy” Jones.

But John Fedele, a spokesperson for Pitt, said some offices only require custodians to empty the wastepaper basket.

Night-time supervisor Randy S. Schmotzer, who oversees the Cathedral staff, said that employees must complete tasks like stripping and waxing floors, shampooing carpets and changing light bulbs in addition to finishing their daily assignments.

He added that employees do not have to complete every work assignment each night. Rather, they should have an “eye for dirt” and clean where needed.

Over the course of an eight-hour shift, the night cleaner is allowed five minutes to punch in for work and a 30-minute lunch break.

“They’ve overloaded us with our work, totally,” Jones said.

Fedele said most employees can complete their assigned work.

“They [Supervisors] review the tasks periodically to make sure there isn’t a problem or any extenuating circumstances,” he added.

In addition to the employee assignment sheets, supervisors have their own versions of the task lists. On the supervisor copies, minute-by-minute time breakdowns appear next to each cleaning assignment.

A supervisor’s copy of an assignment sheet for the fourth and fifth floors of Posvar Hall, which went into effect on April 7, 2000, says the cleaner must take care of 29 offices and two computer labs in one eight-hour shift.

The time allotted for each office ranges from 36 seconds to 1.85 minutes.

“If you take a bathroom break or get a drink of water, you can’t complete it,” Hamer said. “But it’s possible. Highly unlikely, but possible.”

The employee sheets do not contain time guidelines.

Fedele said supervisors use the time breakdowns “to help them plan their employees’ days so that they can make the most efficient use of their time.”

Jones said that one employee used to be assigned to a specific area each day. Consultants were brought in to reformat the work schedules in 1999 and produced the current employee assignment sheets.

Since then, each employee must cover a larger area and handle a greater workload, he added.

Monike L. Losagio, an administrative assistant in the French and Italian department on the 13th floor of the Cathedral, blames the revamping of custodial services seven years ago for the Cathedral’s increasing filth.

“Our bathrooms are horrendous, our bathrooms are just disgusting. In the old days, they were spotless,” she said. “There are dustballs in the stairwells, I call them tumbleweeds.

“It’s very different now, the garbage, we have to put it in the hallway to get it collected,” she said. “When I first started 20 years ago, the carpets would be vacuumed every day. Now you can expect it once a week.”

Jones said that the reorganization of custodians in 1999 reassigned almost two-thirds of workers to night-time shifts.

The bulk of the employees moved from daylight hours to nighttime with the reorganization, according to Schmotzer.

Losagio said that because private offices for faculty stay locked after hours, night employees have access to fewer areas than daytime workers.

“I do not fault the custodians, particularly on daytime shift, I just think they have too much on their plates,” Losagio said. “I fault the system.”