UCLA’s normally bustling campus seems eerily quiet at 9
p.m. on a foggy Friday night. Its 36,000 students have all left for
the weekend and signs of life are few.
But inside a classroom in Haines Hall, Will Arnold’s night
has only begun.
As he prepares for his “lunch break,” Arnold sweeps
through the rows of chairs, forming a massive pile of that
day’s leavings: abandoned coffee cups, apple cores, discarded
newspapers and even a perfectly good Nalgene bottle.
For Arnold, the hours can be long and the work plentiful, but
never too boring, as he says there’s always someone around to
talk to or even to lend a helping hand.
The late-night custodial shift at UCLA ““ a job workers say
has good benefits but less-than-desirable pay ““ is like no
other job, as its unconventional hours turn 9 to 5 workdays, and
workers’ lives, on their heads.
Custodians like Arnold arrive at 5:30 p.m., when most students
are finishing up their last classes of the day. After a meal break
at 9:30 p.m. they continue cleaning until 2 a.m.
“For me, I’m not a day person, so the 5:30 to 2
shift is great,” said Charles Smith, a custodian who waxes
floors in South Campus buildings.
Smith doesn’t own a car and must take buses for his
four-hour round- trip commute from South Los Angeles. In the
evening, when bus service is drastically reduced, Smith said he has
to wait at 3 a.m. on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western
Avenue for his late-night transfer.
“I only get to see my wife on the weekends. We spend maybe
a couple hours a day together during the week,” Smith
said.
Smith gets home at about 4 a.m., and is asleep by 7 a.m., about
the time his 17-year-old son leaves for school.
Arnold has a car, which allows him to be home most nights by
2:30 a.m., but has to pay $14 per month for parking. He believes
the fee is unfair, as he parks at a time when most students have
left for the day and parking spots are plentiful.
Unlike Smith, Arnold sleeps as soon as he gets home, breaking
his night’s rest into two smaller segments in order to take
his 10-year-old daughter to school and his girlfriend to work.
“I’m up most of the time until (noon),” he
said.
Both Arnold and Smith said they don’t mind the nocturnal
hours; their biggest complaint is the pay.
Custodial workers at UCLA start at $9 an hour. If they work the
night shift, they get an extra 32 cents an hour.
For Arnold, a raise would help take the pressure off his
obligations to his three children in Los Angeles and his daughter
in Las Vegas, for whom he pays child support.
“I’ve been here going on four years and I
haven’t seen a raise. That’s the only thing frustrating
for me,” said Arnold, who has had one cost-of-living increase
since being hired.
“It’s a money factor. If I could get a better paid
job, I’d take it,” he added.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
union, which represents UCLA’s custodial workers, is
currently trying to renegotiate hourly wages for its workers, a
process that has hit many snags in the wake of recent budget
cuts.
Both men agreed that UCLA offered them “great
benefits,” as did E.J. Kirby, the director of campus
maintenance.
“If a custodian starts out with no experience they start
out at $9 an hour, but the benefits package is worth twice
that,” he said.
Smith and his wife share the responsibility of providing
financially for their two kids and home.
“My wife’s been working for the post office for 28
years and the benefits here are better than for the federal
government,” Smith said. “But she gets a cost-of-living
raise every year.”
For Arnold, overtime work cleaning the Wooden Center between 2
a.m. and 6 a.m. is his best option to add to his paycheck.
“You don’t have raises, so you look for every chance
you get for extra money,” he said.
There are opportunities for promotion within the custodial
system. Receiving a “lead” position adds an extra
dollar an hour. After that, there are assistant supervisor and
supervisor positions, which also have pay raises.
Both men were positive about regular custodial workers’
chances to advance out of the custodial department by taking job
training classes and become “skilled labor,” but they
seemed skeptical about their ability to move up within the
custodial system.
“My perception is it’s not what you know, it’s
who you know,” Smith said.
In the most recent of employee surveys, the number one concern
was job training and the ability to advance.
Kirby said there were many free classes offered to help
employees learn a trade, which would allow them to take a job
within the university that would increase their income.
“We have plumbing classes at night … (and) elevator
classes, that are open to any employee that’s here,” he
said.
Recently, 140 of the approximately 225 custodians on staff
expressed interest in taking an English as a Second Language
course. As a result, an ESL class for the staff was contracted
through UCLA extension.
The new program’s first class of 36 students recently
passed the 10-week course, and Kirby said the response from
custodians has been positive.
“A lot of them said now they can assist their children
with their homework. They’re much more confident conversing
in English,” he said.
But, Smith is skeptical of the real opportunities the programs
provide.
“The training programs … here are just to pacify certain
people,” he said.
The respect given to UCLA’s custodians is an important
issue to Alex Tucker, special project and development coordinator
for the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and
president of the UCLA Black Faculty and Staff Association.
Tucker works in Haines Hall where he frequently socializes with
the custodians, including Arnold, whom Tucker praised for his help
even when it wasn’t part of his custodial duties.
“Essentially they’re on the front line in keeping
the university’s appearance. Their job is a thankless one and
they deserve every bit of respect and as increased an income as
possible,” he said.
Tucker said the night staff are often overlooked when some
trainings and events are planned, citing as an example a recent
all-staff party held by Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
“It was during the day when most of them couldn’t
come,” he said, referring to the fact that the majority of
night custodians would be home sleeping.
Smith and Arnold both said one of the only problems custodians
encounter late at night is with drifters who take advantage of the
24-hour access to most campus buildings.
“You may have people that are non-students. They’ll
have free reign of the buildings,” Smith said, adding that
some women custodians have had problems with transients.
He also spoke of his biggest on-the-job annoyance: the tendency
of over-zealous students and faculty working late at night to walk
through an area he’s waxing; a process that takes several
hours to complete.
“Some people don’t want to hear about the
detours,” Smith said. “So you have to start all over
again.”