Custodians win important ruling

From KGW.com:

"A divided Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Portland School District lacked authority to terminate its 300 custodians in 2002 and replace them by subcontracting for janitorial services to save money.

"The court decided 4-3 that the district is required to follow a 1937 state civil service law when hiring janitors and that the law says custodians are employees of the district, not of private companies."

The district is complaining about this ruling, citing the $10.6 million in the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years the district saved. However, what they don't mention is the poor service they received during this time.

I've heard from many people about how the schools are dirtier than they used to be. Things aren't taken care of as fast as they should.

Last year, we rented a PPS high school. Part of the fee we paid was for the cafeteria to be set up as we needed it and to have a custodian available for various items.

Upon arrival, the tables and chairs needed had not been moved into the cafeteria. We had to spend hours moving tables and chairs out of the teacher's lunchroom and into the cafeteria. We had to move large tables out of the hallway and into the cafeteria. And still there weren't as many tables as were promised. We ended up having to rent additional tables from a party supply company.

Because we had to do all of this work, we were still setting up the room when people arrived for dinner-- more than five hours later.

The windows were all closed and the air conditioning was not on. With as much heavy labor as everyone was having to do, it quickly got hot. The cafeteria employee who was there to monitor our use of the kitchen called the custodial worker over and over on the walkie talkie-- no response.

Finally someone figured out how to open a few windows and we did it ourselves (it required a special tool).

As it got later in the evening, it grew dark outside. People had to walk down a ramp or stairs to exit the event. No lights were on outside, making it very dangerous.

Once again the custodial worker was called over and over... no answer.

We tried numerous times to catch his attention and get him to come and do the job we were paying for-- he'd quickly go into an area we weren't supposed to be in, or didn't have access to.

Throughout the entire evening we couldn't get any help from the custodial worker, even though we'd paid for it.

We attempted to get a refund for that portion of the charges for the room; however, the district would never return our calls regarding the lack of service.

While the district may have saved money, what it got in return was poorly paid custodial workers and bad service.

I applaud the Oregon Supreme Court and I hope that we'll see the union custodians back on the job before long.