This Friday, October 8, will mark an inauspicious day at the University of Alberta, as all remaining in-house custodial services will cease to be provided by university staff and will be outsourced to private contractor Bee-Clean.
Back in July, thousands of campus community members signed a petition calling on the U of A to stop the outsourcing of building services staff. Like many of you, we have received no direct response from PEC regarding how this decision was made and why they failed to follow their own procedures for making decisions regarding outsourcing.
We remain incredibly frustrated that university leadership has chosen to address the university’s fiscal crisis by sacrificing some of its lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers and turning this important work over to contracted workers being paid far less for the same work. We are saddened by the loss of these critical workers from NASA and the entire university community, especially given that a number of these custodial workers have been with the university since the late 1980s or early 1990s.
We know that many of you have formed strong relationships with the workers who have kept our campus clean and safe for years, and we encourage you to offer your thanks to them over the course of their final week at the university.
Finally, we ask that you wear black on Friday, October 8 to visibly mark this unfortunate day at the university, and send a message to President Flanagan at president@ualberta.ca or on twitter at @BFlanaganUofA and share your feelings regarding the disrespectful decision by university leadership to not respond to the concerns regarding outsourcing raised by campus workers, alumni and community members.
Arts Squared 