CoBster in Residence wrote:

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In a gas station near campus this morning, I heard a PP worker tell an outside contractor that the decision had apparently been put off for a while.

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Apparently, implementation has been moved to Sept. 1. That is still far from certain. There is discussion that some members of the Board may wish to put this off until a new administration is on board.

The PP workers have really worked hard to make a case to the politos, members of the Board, and Meredith as well as some powerful business people in town. They deserve real credit for speaking out, for marshalling their forces, and for making a concerted effort to be heard. Unity is a strength and, at least to some extent, a protection.

The important thing is that this move is delayed until the next administration gets a chance to look at it and do a fair study . . . and to look at the long term benefits/losses for the university and the workers -- results it will be responsible for, unlike the present administration. Even assuming the best intention on the part of the administration, this is not the right move at the right time . . .

 

i agree with stephen on all but one point--the business community. i heard months ago that the business community opposed outsourcing for one reason--$$. it was likely that a company like aramark would not use the local businesses as vendors. they stand to lose business.

i've been here long enough to know that some business people think they should run the university. i worry that we've gotten into "if we approve the end, we approve the means." in this case, if we approve of not outsourcing the PP then we approve of the means--including the influence of local powerful business people. but then, what about the warren paving incident, or the issue of the car dealers during the fleming administration? we don't approve of the end, so we don't approve of their involvement.

I also should say in the interest of transparency that Mitch Berman and I (as President and VP of AAUP) met with Joe Morgan and Allison Easterwood. I had expressed the thought to Joe in aa email (in which I raised my own objections to the plan) that it would be be helpful if he would meet with faculty leaders to explain the administration's point of view on this and to lay out the analysis.

I have to give both of them credit for actually responding, and we met for almost two hours in the TAD conference room last week. Although Joe and Allison made a good case for the move, both Mitch and I felt that the numbers were still unclear in terms of how it was that Aramark was going to achieve all of its projections (for less money than the current PP budget). The answer seemed to be "greater efficiency." Given that the committee moved from 10-1 to 6-5 on the vote, indicating that there was a strong trend moving against outsourcing in its final vote, and given our position that unless the workers themselves buy into the program it is simply not a good time to make this move . . .  and given that we believe that this is an issue that should not be decided for the next President the AAUP continues to support its stated public position that this move should wait until a new administration takes over. Joe clearly believes this is better for the university . . .  and he also seems to believe that unless we do it now the university PP operations are on the edge of disaster.

I don't think these thngs are easy decisions -- and I do think that political inclinations (do you believe in outsourcing philsophically and under what conditions; do you believe in carefully managed outsourcing are are you opposed to outsourcing altogether) are at least partly in the mix in driving this decision.

I don't agree with this presently -- but I don't necessarily agree that there is a deliberate intent is to rip off the workers. It is possible, however, that implementing this plan might very well adversely affect many of them (at least many workers believe so). Until they can be convinced, the plan needs to wait.

Faculty Senate spent a great deal of time discussing this last week. The vote to urge delaying the outsourcing plan was overwhelming, and this was after some quite thoughtful discussion. There are a number of folks on faculty Senate who certainly could not be described as being AAUPers -- far from it. But the consensus was quite strong -- for all the reasons cited.

 

 

 

 

LeftASAP wrote:

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stephen judd wrote: ...Joe clearly believes this is better for the university . . .  and he also seems to believe that unless we do it now the university PP operations are on the edge of disaster. ...         Stephen, isn't the disaster partly being caused by the process that outsourcing was pushed on the employees without clear explanations and the history of this administration making changes and their trying to correct mistakes later?

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Yes -- and we expressed this to Joe and Allyson. Their response was this process was imperfect but it was light years ahead of the process in which food service was outsourced. In other words, they went to great lengths to say that they are "learning."

I think that may be true, but there were still some real problems -- the committee met after the RFP was already let out so the discussion about whether outsourcing even should be considered and why became a discussion about how to outsource; the committee was composed of people who were in positions of authority over some of the people on the committee, which potentially compromises the process, and numerous other issues of significant concern.  

Joe's stated belief is that this decision is not being driven by Shelby but by the draconian economics facing the university (and the increasing poor state of PP) and our need to find sources for money and to be more efficient (and he would also say provide better quality) of service. Although he may believe this personally, I think there is more than adequate reason to believe that this iniaitive is just one more of many examples of decisions being driven by the an administration its way out and looking to complete its "revolution" up to the last possible minute. If I was convinced that it would benefit the workers and serve the university, I'd support it even if it came under Shelby. But there are, to my mind, grave questions that simply bear more examination and that should be done by the next administration.

 

stephen--i think the issue of the budget is an important one. i suspect the reason why we spend money on signage and general aesthetic improvements is that it comes from a different budget than other areas. and you can't move some of this money around.

on the bigger issue of the university's budget, i have a hunch that because state support has been declining over the years, we're becoming more like a private university. by that i mean our budget becomes more dependent on enrollment, tuition, and fund raising. since our fund raising (and endowment) seems dead in the water (except for the improvements to the alumni house), our budget depends a great deal on how many students we enroll and what we charge for tuition. enrollment declines have a serious effect on our operating budget. this means there are ripple effects. knowing people at private universities with small endowments, they are very driven by enrollment--keeping "paying customers" at the university. don't flunk out students, etc. if enrollment declines significantly, then we won't need as many faculty, and so forth.