Facilities Services at Texas A&M may be outsourced, officials said

[TexasTowelie]

A potential major outsourcing of Texas A&’s facilities services appears to be in the works, and employees were told to attend a meeting at 11 a.m. Friday in Rudder Auditorium about the topic.

<<snip>>

“Everytime we go to a meeting around here, and they tell us things are OK, they’re not OK,” said an employee who was in one of Thursday’s meetings who asked not to be identified because of concern about his job.

He was referring to a major round of layoffs in facilities services, which encompasses building services, in July 2010.

The elimination of those 66 positions, mostly low-wage maintenance workers, followed an internal A&M System audit that cited deficiencies in customer service, cost accounting and building maintenance.

http://www.theeagle.com/am/Texas-A-M-facilities-services

[font color=maroon]There are several interesting comments at the link and another group of employees will get screwed.[/font]

[sonias]

1. "mostly low-wage maintenance workers"

You know the kind of people that have very little power. No one speaks for them.

I'm sure the audit was driven by some internal desire to see the money spent with some private company who is probably pretty well connected. Oh private companies will promise the moon for a song, but once they get the contract they have no competition, so they'll get shoddy and cut corners too. They may even rehire some of the same employees who will be laid off - and then pay them even less than they were making.

[white cloud]

3. Sad but true

You know the kind of people that have very little power. No one speaks for them.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Follow-up from Friday's meeting:

Worried about the possibility of no longer being Texas A&M employees and having diminished health benefits, more than 700 of Aggieland's rank-and-file workers packed Rudder Theatre on Friday in an emotional meeting to voice concerns about the plan to outsource much of facilities services and dining services.

<<snip>>

A&M System Chancellor John Sharp said this week that, in an effort to save money and generate revenue, he plans to put out requests for proposal for private companies to take over campus landscaping, custodial services, building maintenance and dining services. It's unclear how many jobs would be outsourced, but some 700 employees are in facilities services, and another 200 in dining services.

After the meeting, Sharp announced that the A&M System had issued a request for proposals for a private entity to operate dining services, which includes catering and 34 locations that serve the university's 50,000 students. Future RFPs will include those for custodial services, building maintenance and landscaping services.

<<snip>>

"Our employees, their jobs, salaries and benefits will be the key consideration in evaluation of any proposal from the private sector," Sharp said in the statement. "This evaluation will be led by a multidisciplinary team as part of a careful and deliberate process over the next several months."

http://www.theeagle.com/local/A-amp-amp-M-plan-worries-staff--6993026

[font color=green]John Sharp may claim to be a Democrat, but most of the time he doesn't act like one. He treated state employees with contempt, pushed draconian budget cuts in public schools and initiated the privatization of the prison system when he was state comptroller. So I'm not surprised that he has resorted to his old bag of tricks again.

When you examine the photos at the above link, you will see that the audience consists primarily of ethnic minorities.[/font]