Monday, 5/5/97 UCLA Dental School lays off staff, shuts down
laboratories Employees may file legal action as university turns to
outside contractors for work
By Hannah Miller Daily Bruin Senior Staff UCLA’s ongoing
restructuring of its medical center has made new inroads, causing
the shutdown of the dental school’s teaching and professional
laboratories and the layoff of their staff. The labs, which
construct prosthetics for the UCLA dental community, will be shut
down June 23. Work will be subcontracted to an off-campus firm. Of
the 13 employees laid off, some fear the shutdown’s implications
for learning at the highly reputed UCLA School of Dentistry. "Here
at the labs, the students are getting technical teaching," said
Alan Skopp, head ceramist in the professional lab. "With the
shutdown, that is something they won’t have access to." But the
prosthetics work currently done in the labs can be done elsewhere
at much lower cost, administrators argue. "The school can’t afford
to maintain its internal labs when vendors will provide the same
services for nearly half a million dollars less a year," said
dental school Dean W. Rory Hume in a statement. The pending closure
was announced to lab staff April 23. Since then, employees have
found themselves aligned with the growing body of UCLA workers
displaced by the restructuring. "Nobody knows who’s next," Skopp
said. "There was a whole restructuring program that we didn’t know
anything about. Everybody’s still in shock." Students at the dental
school learn to do laboratory work by example, watching the staff
as they construct crowns, dentures and bridges. Some of these
functions will continue to be performed on campus at UCLA’s Faculty
Group Dental Practice and the Center for Esthetic Dentistry. Five
staff members will be retained to do this work. For the lab
employees, the move to an outside entity is bound to cause
problems. According to employees, on-campus labs allow for better
communication between prosthodontists and dentists, which usually
results in more customized prosthetics. UCLA argues that it is
merely following industry standards. UC San Francisco and USC,
among others, "long ago hired private companies to handle their
schools’ lab work," said Elaine Scmidt, a university spokesperson.
For the newly laid-off employees, a primary concern is the loss of
benefits packages. Several employees in the labs – like Skopp, who
has worked there 18 years – are close to earning retirement
packages, which are now in danger of cancellation due to the
layoffs. The UC dental personnel office has helped employees put
resumes together, Skopp said, although they "can’t guarantee that
we can find work on campus, at least not at this pay scale." UCLA
Human Resources has also stressed that many employees are eligible
for early retirement. Some employees have contacted labor
representatives with the Union of Professional and Technical
Workers and are considering taking legal action against the
university. The labs, on the second and third floors of the dental
building, have been a part of the UCLA School of Dentistry for 30
years. They are the first segment of the dental school to be hit by
the university’s restructuring initiative. Previous staff
reductions in the dental school were almost always done by
attrition. This time, the shutdown was suggested by an audit
performed by the medical school. "This will have a tremendous
impact on the community," Skopp said. "I think that these are the
first group of layoffs since the dental school opened." The dental
school closures come on the heels of a similar restructuring in the
clinical labs in the medical center. There, large-scale layoffs and
staff reshuffling prompted employees to file a grievance with the
Public Employee Relations Board. Their claim is scheduled to be
heard this summer. Previous Daily Bruin stories Institute awarded
$1.2 million research grant, January 9, 1997