15 Custodians Laid Off

(Updated Monday 9:50 p.m. with new disciplinary information.) As planned, the school district has let go 15 custodians as part of a shift toward privatization — with an unexpected wrinkle: Instead of cutting jobs based on seniority, managers were allowed to ​“pick and choose” who would go.

The school board last week approved the layoffs of the 15 full-time, unionized custodians, effective last Friday.

The move was part of a planned downsizing as the city shifted towards privatizing a third of the workers who clean city schools.

The 15 custodians, some of whom had worked for as many as 17 years, saw the writing on the wall in December, when they were demoted to ​“temporary floaters.” The job cuts came due to an arbitration decision handed down to the city after custodians in AFSCME Council 4 Local 287 rejected a labor contract their union leaders had hatched with the city. The decision allowed the city to cut the workforce from 154 to 100 by July 1 and hire private workers to take previously unionized jobs.

As they prepared for unemployment Friday, several workers decried the way they were let go — based in part on sick time and discipline, not just on years on the job.

Leon Davis (pictured above), a Dwight homeowner who spent 17 years on the custodial workforce, said the process took him by surprise.

“We didn’t have a problem with laying off people,” Davis said. ​“It’s the way they laid them off.”

William Jackson, who grew up in New Haven and lives in Hamden, got laid off after 16 years on the job.

“I never thought this would happen, especially with me and all the seniority I have,” he said. ​“We just thought it would go last one hired, first one to go — but it didn’t go that way.” Other workers with fewer years on the job were allowed to stay.

Workers claim their union and city went ​“behind our backs” to scrap seniority and allow management to get rid of higher-paid workers, undercutting the civil service process by which workers were originally hired.

“They circumvented civil service so they could basically pick and choose,” said one custodian who retained his job. He declined to give his name for fear of retribution.

City and union officials both maintained the layoffs took place according to the arbitrator-sanctioned process.

The layoffs are ​“directly related to the arbitration award, and we are simply following the provisions,” said schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark. ​“We have met with and communicated with the union leadership on each step of the award implementation.”

Larry Dorman, spokesman for AFSCME Council 4, agreed.

“Last summer, Local 287 members voted to reject a tentative agreement, which triggered the binding arbitration award that allows the Board of Education to reduce the unionized custodial workforce to 100,” said Dorman in an emailed statement. He noted that the union saved 100 jobs from being outsourced.

“While we never want to see any worker laid off anywhere, the hard work and commitment of AFSCME Local 287 leadership stopped wholesale privatization and prevented an economic calamity from taking place in New Haven,” Dorman said.

City spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton said management worked with labor to determine who got laid off. Those who were laid off ​“did not meet the essential functions of the job and were not rehired” to their original jobs.

“In every case,” she said, ​“these were joint labor-management decisions.”

Several workers said their union didn’t prepare them for the way the layoffs unfolded.

The Interview

Davis, who’s 49, said he spent 15 years at the top level in his union, as head custodian at King/Robinson school. He made $21 per hour. When the arbitration award came down, he saw his fate take a turn.

According to the arbitration award, all workers had to re-bid for their jobs. That was a surprise to some workers. They were called in for interviews with AFB Facilities Management, the private company that manages custodians on behalf of the school district. In a letter to employees, AFB said workers were judged based on three factors: sick time, disciplinary history and performance in the interview.

Davis said his interview last December was brief, less than 10 minutes. He believes he sailed through the questions — such as, ​“what’s the first thing you do when you get to school in the morning?” — which were so easy his daughter could answer them.

He had a clean record, he said. However, last December he was suspended for two days without pay on an allegation of stealing floor tiles. (Click here to read his disciplinary letter.)

But he had called in sick 23 days in the previous year.

Davis said the 23 days weren’t because of a certain illness — they just ​“accumulated over time.”

After the interview, he got a letter notifying him of ​“non-qualification for new custodial positions.” He was given two options: Take a $20,000 buyout or stay on the force, demoted from head custodian to ​“temporary floater.” He chose to keep working, taking a pay cut from $21 to $19 per hour.

Those ​“temporary floaters” fell into a bottom tier of workers who would then be targeted first for layoffs.

Davis said he was never told why he didn’t make the cut.

Sick Time

His story fits a pattern of several workers interviewed: They had called in sick a lot.

Sick time was a major factor in the city’s quest to privatize the custodial workforce. On any given day, 25 percent of custodians would be absent ​“because of contractual work rules which promote abuse of sick time and excessive call-outs,” mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Matteson has said. The arrangement was costly because the city had to hire part-time workers to cover those shifts. In a comment to the Independent, Matteson put the blame on ​“a set of work rules which foster these types of abuses.”

Workers interviewed said they never broke any policy. Custodians accrued sick days according to how many days they worked.

“I never took a sick day that I didn’t have,” said William Jackson.

Jackson said he took 22 sick days last year. ​“A lot of it had to do with my wife. She was out of work for three months,” he said.

Rafael Crespo (pictured), who’s 54, said he took 35 sick days over the course of two years — the main factor that he said lost him his job as a head custodian. He said the sick time came due to a shoulder injury he sustained on the job.

Crespo, who lives in the Hill, has been a New Haven school custodian for 13 years. He was demoted to ​“temporary floater” like Davis, Jackson and the rest of the men laid off last week. He said the demotion knocked down his salary by $10,000.

Crespo said he was told that his sick time cost him his job. He and others maintained they never broke the rules.

“We never had a sick policy that if you take this many sick days you get in trouble,” William Jackson explained. He said his disciplinary record was clean.

There was ​“no sick policy in the contract,” he said, ​“so how could you use that against me?”

“Giving Up Our Rights”

After spending six months as ​“temporary floaters,” workers were notified of their pending layoffs in a meeting on June 21. They were given an option to take two weeks’ severance pay and another month of medical coverage — if they signed an agreement not to sue the city.

Jackson, Crespo and Davis all refused to sign.

“You’re giving away your rights to due process,” Jackson said.

Davis said he has already filed a complaint with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities over the way he was let go.

Crespo said he has a pending workman’s compensation complaint, and is considering filing a discrimination lawsuit against the city.

The kicker, he said, was when he discovered the Board of Ed posted a job opening calling for applicants to a new job — custodian ​“floater.” The job was posted on June 11.

That’s the same job Crespo and his coworkers held.

“How can you be laying people off if you’re hiring back for the same position?” asked Crespo in an interview in his Greenwich Avenue home.

“They’re not hiring right now,” city spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton later clarified. She said the city is ​“developing a list” of qualified candidates to maintain the custodial workforce at 100 people. The city will interview new applicants, and offer them the civil service test, so that ​“in case there’s openings, we’re ready to go.”

Crespo and Co. aren’t excluded from these jobs, Benton said: ​“There’s nothing stopping these individuals from reapplying through that process.” Unlike laid-off workers in other situations, these custodians are not on ​“recall,” so they won’t get priority over other applicants.

Union spokesman Dorman said the union did its best to protect workers against the privatization push.

“In the end, we maintained collective bargaining rights for the workers we represent while negotiating an early retirement incentive that spared many employees from being thrown onto the street with no safety net,” he said. The city offered a retirement package for workers, depending on the number of years served.

Crespo said he turned down the golden handshake the city offered because he fell in an ​“in-between” category, between 10 and 20 years on the job, where the offer wasn’t that lucrative.

After a decade and a half on the job, workers are now looking at an uncertain future.

Crespo said he and his wife, who’s unemployed, are trying to raise a 3‑year-old son. Meanwhile, he’s making $2,000-a-month mortgage payments to support a daughter and grandchildren on the first floor of his two-family home.

“I’m in danger of losing my house,” he said. ​“I’m going to have to get back on my feet as soon as possible.”