KPLU Local News
(2010-06-14)
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UFSE Local 1488 President John Frazier leading the rally at the UW's Red Square prior to a Board of Regents Meeting.
Photo by Bellamy Pailthorp.
Audio: "Save the swing shift, save the swing shift!..."
Demonstrators supporting the state workers union that represents the janitors made their voice heard on campus, with a rally on red square.
Union President John Frazier says the university's cost cutting is being carried out on the backs of some of its lowest earners. Evening hours cost about seventy-five cents more per hour. The U-dub has been eliminating custodial jobs and tried last year to get rid of the swing shift altogether. The union fought that and saved more than forty swing shifts for janitors. But Frazier says now that the school year is ending, the administration is at it again.
"They're trying to move them again, the whole swing shift to the day shift. And most of the workers are immigrants and they have second jobs, they have babysitting issues and management doesn't seem to care."
Not far behind him at the rally, is a woman in her fifties with a several children in tow.
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| 53-year-old Sengaly Xongvilay, a custodian for the UW, brought three of her five grandchildren to rally before the Board of Regents Meeting. She's asking them to save her swing shift so that she can provide child care for her daughter during the day. She came to Seattle several decades ago as a refugee from Laos. |
She's got one baby in a sling, and two toddlers with her, holding hand-drawn signs that ask the university president ...will he babysit them? She gets emotional when I ask her about her country of origin says she's a refugee from Laos. She's scared of falling back into poverty. She's caring for several generations at once, babysitting by day, cleaning the university's labs and classrooms in the evenings.
"It's too hard for me to take care of my family - my kids, my grandkids, my mother, my father - to take care, we don't have time to take care of them. That's why we have to come here - to fight," she says, choking back tears.
For the university, it's mostly an issue of cost. Spokesman Bob Roseth says the process of eliminating the swing shift has been going on for more than a decade. And he says with this last move, they let people know far in advance what was going to happen.
"We tried to give people a year's notice about this, so they could adopt plans accordingly," he says. "And if they can't make it work for them over a year - the ability of the university to continue to do that in these tight budget times is - we just don't have that much economic freedom anymore."
The University of Washington has been forced by the state to slash its budget by one third in the past year and a half. It's also charging more for tuition and increasing class sizes. But the union says the pay differential for a couple dozen evening janitors is, relatively speaking, such small potatoes- the school should be able to find that money somehow.
For More Information:
Washington Federation of State Employees - union's bargaining team web site
Washington State Labor Relations Office, Collective Bargaining Agreements
Seattle Times, 5/1/2010, "UW: Hard Course Ahead for Funding"
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