Union fights plan to outsource custodial work at Hillsboro schools

To save money, Hillsboro School District — Oregon’s fourth largest — is proposing to contract out 58 custodial and grounds-keeping jobs. Assistant superintendent Betsy Biller told the Northwest Labor Press the savings would come from lower benefits.

“We said ‘no thanks,’” said district head electrician Tom Ramsey, chief negotiator for American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 4671. Local 4671 represents 1,042 Hillsboro School District classified employees, including the 56 custodians and two groundskeepers who stand to lose their jobs.

The plan to contract out was presented to the union in contract negotiations. The current union contract expired June 30. The two sides continue to meet, though so far without agreement.

Under the district’s proposal, all except one head custodian position at each school would be privatized.

Biller said the district wants to keep its existing custodians, and therefore would require any private contractor to hire all current Hillsboro School District custodians and groundskeepers, as long as they met the contractor’s qualifications.

Ramsey questioned whether the district would be able to make good on that promise, because state law requires government entities that contract out to favor contractors that employ the disabled. Biller said the district intends to address that concern in the way it writes its request for proposals.

The district also says it would require that the custodians continue to earn their current hourly rate — at least for the first year.

The custodians whose jobs are at risk earn $11.25 to $17.03 an hour, plus health and pension benefits.

It’s the benefits that they expect to lose by contracting out.

Benefits add quite a bit to payroll costs, Biller said. Contributions to the Public Employee Pension System (PERS) are 13.5 percent this year, and family medical, dental and vision coverage costs the district somewhere in the range of $800 a month.

The district has no hard figures for how much it would save by contracting out, but Biller affirmed that it could be in the range of $400,000 to $950,000 a year.

Ramsey said the union tried to come up with alternative proposals to save money.

“Apparently the district is not interested in our savings,” Ramsey said.

To take their case to the public, AFT held a a rally June 15 at the edge of the farm fields that border district headquarters at 3083 NE 49th Place. Then they picketed on busy Shute Road, buoyed by honks from supporters driving by.

“We have to be honest; the district is having some budget constraints,” said Hillsboro teachers’ union president Bonnie Kiester, who walked the picket line with AFT. “But we have to reassess priorities, and keeping reliable people on the job should be one of them.”

“Contracting out is ultimately a downward spiral,” Kiester said.

Century High School custodian Rich Ehrhart has seen it before. Ehrhart was a custodian at Portland Public Schools for nearly 14 years, and planned to retire there. But the district contracted out custodial work in 2002, and Ehrhart and 300 others lost their jobs. He next found work as a custodian in the Reynolds School District, only to be laid off two months later. He did a temporary stint at Beaverton School District, and found his way to the Hillsboro district. Now privatization threatens his job once again.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.