Small crew inhibits projects
“There’s not a whole lot about this job that’s really glamorous,” says Portland State University’s facilities worker Marc Luce, his formerly white gloves now dyed the color of whatever is blocking the pipes behind Shattuck Hall room 120.
As Bill Sorenson, PSU’s only full-time plumber, lays out lengths of pipe snake, a sort of giant mechanical pipe cleaner, Luce gingerly feeds them into the pipe. It takes some effort to get the coils of the snake to go in, but Luce does so with rapt attention, like an expert fisherman waiting for a strike.
“I’m hitting something,” says Luce, who has hooked dishtowels and even an old T-shirt from the depths of PSU’s plumbing. Although Luce says so with an authority that comes with experience, he isn’t actually a plumber.
Facilities workers like Luce have had to stretch their expertise to cover holes left by a maintenance budget that’s extremely tight.
“When you work here,” said Luce, “you’ve got to do a little of everything.”
As projections of Oregon’s tax revenue plummet, public universities have deferred regular maintenance to save money. As a fraction of total facilities cost, PSU has put off more maintenance than any other public university in Oregon. At an estimated $160 million, PSU’s deferred maintenance is 28 percent of the total cost of all of PSU’s facilities.
“We just don’t have people doing preventative maintenance,” said James Martell, a PSU facilities worker. The result, he said, is problems that might be cheaper to fix earlier are overlooked until later, when they may be far costlier.
One result is long hours for workers.
“I can’t remember the last time I worked a 40-hour week,” Sorenson said.
As the only plumber, however, Sorenson is on call 24 hours a day.
Michael Irish, PSU’s director of facilities, agreed that maintenance at PSU is in bad shape.
However, money for union employees has dropped while total facilities spending has increased. From the 2001-2002 to 2002-03 budgets, total facilities spending has increased from $10.7 million to $13.3 million. Over the same period, union salaries have dropped from $1.22 million to $1.10 million.
As a result, six facilities employees were laid off last June.
“We’re trying to remedy the decrease in classified salaries right now,” Irish said.
Hiring more workers might save money by reducing total overtime, Irish said. The problem is that all of the facilities departments are equally overworked, Irish said, so pinning down new positions may be difficult.
Three workers have been hired back recently, and Irish hopes to hire three more, though there is no schedule for doing so.
The three most recent hires came after a grievance was filed with the Oregon Public Employees Union (OPEU) when PSU violated union policy by contracting outside painters after laying in-house painters off.
“We’ve acknowledged the violation,” said Irish, who was not working for PSU when it took place.
Zoe Birkle, president of PSU’s OPEU chapter, said union relations had markedly improved since the grievance was filed, and pointed to the opening of a classified employees union office in Neuberger Hall last Thursday as evidence.
The office, which serves unionized workers, is the first of its kind to be opened on the campus of a public Oregon university.
“It’s a huge step,” Birkle said.
Still, said Birkle, low staff numbers have made working at PSU more difficult.
That goes for Luce and Sorenson as well. It turns out that 35 feet of pipe snake isn’t enough to clear the clog, and just as they’ve decided to get the 100-footer they get called to a leak in the basement of the Smith Memorial Student Union.
Passing a flashlight beam over stacks of chairs, an old lectern and two pipes that drip steaming water directly onto a drain on the basement floor, Sorenson and Luce spread out to find the leak.
“You never get bored on this job,” Luce said.
