Berkeley's Betrayal - Public Sociology @ Berkeley - University of ...

For example, both custodians and food service workers who work on or around wet floorscomplain that they are not given slip-resistant shoes. Such shoes, which provide more traction onwet surfaces, are cheap and easy to purchase. Together with her co-workers, Marta, who hasworked for the university for seventeen years, has been asking for slip-resistant shoes for overthree years. She works in a dormitory dining hall, where water from the dishwashing area andspilled food combined with a fast-paced work routine make slips hard to avoid. The kitchen isfilled with dangerous equipment and sharp objects and although it is clearly not a safe place tolose your balance, Marta’s requests have been ignored.University facilities bring special safety concerns. While wringing out a mop, Jessica, a custodian,was accidentally stabbed with a used syringe. Although special receptacles for syringedisposal were subsequently placed in all laboratories, Jessica maintains that she and the othercustodial workers continue to find used syringes haphazardly dumped into the waste cans.“Please,” Jessica begs us during the interview, “tell the students to respect us!” At the time ofthe interview, Jessica was working with other members of her union to try to persuade theadministration to put first-aid kits on the custodial carts. At a meeting right before the interview,a group of custodians and union representatives met with officials from U.C. Labor Relations tomake this demand. At the meeting, Jessica said, university officials argued that they do not havethe funds to provide the first-aid kits. Jessica expects the custodians to succeed eventually in gettingthe kits, but having to fight so hard for something so elementary causes her much grief.Jessica is left with, in her words, the feeling that “I am not even worth the price of a first aid kit.”Despite a growing awareness nation-wide of the dangers of repetitive work using nonergonomicequipment, workers of all kinds complain that they do not receive the equipment theyneed until long after they have sustained a repetitive stress injury. 16 One administrative assistantwe spoke with complained that there is an extraordinarily long delay between the announcementof a health problem and the eventual delivery of some kind of aid. After she had reported neckand back pain associated with repetitive stress injury, she waited a full eight months for anergonomic evaluation of her workstation and an additional eight months for the new equipment.Custodians complain that their supervisors do not take into consideration the strain ofrepetitive work when delegating responsibilities. Many members of the custodial staff suffer armand back injuries from the continuous lifting of awkward, heavy trash and recycling bags. At thetime of our interviews, many custodians worried that a newly proposed work arrangement called“Team Cleaning”—wherein custodians would work together in teams, dividing up the labor sothat each person would perform the same task for the duration of the shift—would increase thenumber of repetitive stress injuries. “What are they trying to do, kill us?” one custodianexclaimed. This new system “means somebody is going to have to do the trash and nothing else,somebody is going to have to do the floors and nothing else. Can you imagine?”Those who work in isolated areas after dark are exposed to other dangers. In recent years,the university has increased the resources devoted to campus safety for students. There are nowlights in areas students walk through on their way to libraries, emergency phones on the moreremoved wooded pathways, and campus safety escorts who offer walks to cars or nearby dormitories.But less attention has been paid to employees who work alone in and around empty buildings.For instance, custodians who work in the evening hours complain of being afraid to taketrash out to dumpsters in the dark.16