Disclaimer: This story was written in the fall semester of 2022 after Issue X was published. Some information may have changed since that time.
After a semester under a new union contract, the campus custodial staff continue to thrive as a crucial part of the college community.
The custodial staff are protected by the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), the labor union representing New York State employees. In August, the CSEA and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration ratified an updated five-year agreement, including a pay raise and a change to how employees gain benefits from tenure.
“The custodial staff is, I believe, the most integral part of keeping this engine running,” Gary Thompson said. Thompson has been a janitor and president of the CSEA Local 611 since August 2021. “Without it, there’s nothing. At the end of the day when the buildings are locked and secured, they’re clean, the lights work, the heat’s running, the bills are paid, that’s because CSEA employees have worked together to get the job accomplished.”
Thompson knew the exact date he first started working at SUNY Oswego: Dec. 27, 2017. Prior to this he was the town legislator for the Town of Hannibal and a chef at several restaurants. Thompson said that when he first took office, it was “a little rough,” but the custodial staff now has “a great working relationship” with the college. At the start of the pandemic, the custodial staff faced a wage freeze and a pause to new hires. Combined with a lot of retirees, the custodial staff still faces a staffing shortage that resulted in a higher workload.
“With the pride the employees have for this campus, everyone took on the challenge,” Thompson said. “There were days where we felt like giving up, where we didn’t want to go on anymore with this baloney, but we kept on chugging.”
The current contract is retroactive for April 2021 and lasts until April 2026. The amount of time for an employee to be vested in the union changed from ten to five years, making it easier and faster for employees to gain membership benefits. Another major change was to the longevity schedule, or the amount of tenure that determines their yearly bonus, from 12 years “in grade,” or in a certain position, to 12 years working for the state in total. In other words, prior to the change if an employee worked for more than 12 years with the state, they still would not be able to gain longevity benefits if they switched positions or received a promotion within that time frame. Longevity benefits increase with time worked; 12 years of state service qualify for $1,500 in longevity payment, 17 years qualify for $3,000 and 22 years for $4,500. The contract also included a general salary raise of 2% retroactive the past two years and 3% effective each year until 2025. Notably, the state has not yet made the current contract publicly available online.
There are two wings of the custodial staff, for student housing and academic buildings. Housing janitors work one shift from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., while academic buildings have 24-hour service. The custodial staff are separated into a tier system of command. The lowest, entry-level position is a cleaner, known as an “SG5.” Next is SG6, or “FOA1s,” a newer position which are facilities operations assistants. SG7s are typical janitors, who, along with typical custodial duties, assign tasks to the entry-level cleaners, such as work orders. Oneida Hall, for instance, has seven cleaners and one SG7 janitor.
SG11s are supervising janitors, who hold the responsibilities of a janitor along with other authoritative roles. There is a fair amount of mobility within the system; many higher-ups, including Thompson, started off as a cleaner.
Aaron Johnson is the head janitor (“SG15”) for the residence halls. He has been working with the college since 2003 after leaving the Army. He oversees the work of the 51 janitors working in student housing, including eight student workers. Still, staffing shortages leave 16 vacant positions.
“Since the pandemic, we’ve lost a lot of people,” Johnson said. “A lot of people retired, and or they went to find work elsewhere. But we are now starting on an upswing. We’re starting to get some new hires, which is a good thing so we can fill some of these vacant positions that we currently have.”
While the waste stream on campus had a documented decline during the quarantine semesters, Johnson said the staff found it more difficult to deal with litter.
“Ever since the pandemic brought on Uber Eats, DoorDash, all that stuff, we found it actually to be more trash,” Johnson said. “We happened to do more pickups because we’d have all these cardboard boxes and things like that that get intermingled, and then my staff aren’t going to go through and sift through the garbage to get the recyclables out because that’s very unsafe to do that.”
Dan Upcraft is a supervising housing janitor. He began working as a janitor in 2003; now he has a paper-filled office at Funnelle Hall. He affirmed the asset of having a union, while also noting that the campus has a great environment for janitors.
“My philosophy on this campus is you choose your destiny out here, because a lot of the custodians that started with me throughout the years have went on to much better things,” Upcraft said. He listed employees moving on to working in HVAC, plumbing and even getting degrees on campus through two-year programs offered through the college.
In regards to the staffing shortage, Upcraft said they are “slowly making progress to where we need to be.”
Rob Smith is a janitor at Scales Hall. Prior to working at Oswego he was on active duty in the Army for ten years. According to him, there is never a typical day on the job, whether it means dealing with random vomit or spiders infesting students’ rooms. Smith experienced the staffing shortage firsthand. At the time of reporting, it was the first time in three years that the hall had been fully staffed.
“We have buildings that are supposed to have a staff of nine and they’ve been working on four or five,” Smith said.
Smith said that the hardest thing about the job was gossip among staff. “It’s a college campus and unfortunately even within employees there’s personality differences and too many things get blown out of proportion,” he said. “You could be amazed at how you could just be talking to a friend and tell them about something that either bothered you or something you thought you had, and … one day to two days later the whole campus knows about it and it’s an issue.”
Eric Wallen is a janitor at Waterbury Hall. Prior to being a janitor he worked at Walmart as overnight stocking and maintenance. He applied for the custodial position since he saw it as a better opportunity with good pay. However, he was not surprised by the staffing shortage.
“No one really wants to be doing this kind of work, cleaning bathrooms,” Wallen said. “It’s not really a preferred career. I don’t think we get as many candidates as we should and the economic hit with the college itself and SUNY overall might not have the resources to hire as much as they used to be able to.”
Wallen said the staff get along quite well. “We go to lunch together. We’ve all known each other for years. We’ve all worked with each other in the summertime and the wintertime,” he said.
Like Smith, Wallen said the job has had some atypical experiences. He said that when dining halls issued paper to-go bags early in the pandemic, students stuffed showers full of the bags as a rebellion.
Some janitors are students themselves. Johnson emphasized the importance for student workers to hold onto their paperwork as to add onto the qualifications for retirement from future state or federal-level jobs.
Christopher Chalker is a junior majoring in creative writing who has been a student janitor for about a month and a half. He started off working at Pathfinder Dining Hall, but then pursued a part-time job as a student janitor.
“This is one of the few jobs that I’ve worked that I don’t have any complaints about really anything,” Chalker said. “Everyone’s great, kind, respectful. The majority of them are on top of everything.”
Behind the many gears turning the busy engines of academic life is a community of workers ensuring that the facilities on campus are clean and safe for everyone who graces the halls of dormitories and lecture halls. But this does not mean that their representation goes unthreatened. The CSEA Local 611 has constantly been receiving anti-union propaganda from the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank with more than 70 pending lawsuits against public-sector unions.
“Many of the members write ‘F-U’ on it and send it back. That way they waste money on a stamp,” Thompson said, giving it a hard laugh.
Photo by: Mackenzie Shields
