UA Administrators Study Handing Custodial, Groundskeeping Crews to Private Company

An Editor’s Note by Ben Pollock, Local 965 Vice President

The proposal has not been widely announced, but the University of Arkansas is considering having the company SSC Services for Education take over custodial and groundskeeping for the Fayetteville campus, specifically Facilities, Arkansas Union, Housing and Athletics.

These Fayetteville campus service workers are expected to be offered jobs with SSC with similar salaries and “comparable or better” benefits, Scott Turley, associate vice chancellor for facilities, told the UA Staff Senate at its Feb. 14, 2024, meeting.

One benefit, however, won’t be given to new employees whom SSC hires. Currently, any full-time UA employee as well as their spouse and children may get a substantial tuition waiver (90% discount for the employee, 50% discount for their spouse or dependent children for this campus). Those currently enrolled at UA would continue to receive this benefit, Turley said, adding that SSC has been asked to grant this benefit to employee children who are graduating high school this spring and plan to attend UA in the fall.

Salaries for new hires would be up to SSC but would be “competitive,” Turley said.

The university’s structure of vacation and sick leave might become a PTO (paid time off) structure under SSC. “Paid time off,” according to common definition, is when the employer combines sick days, vacation days and other leave that the worker would draw from. 

SSC Services for Education is a subsidiary of Compass Group, as is the UA’s privatized food service Chartwells Higher Ed, which came to campus in 1998. (Barnes & Noble won the bid to privatize operations of the University of Arkansas Store in late 2019.)

Meetings have been held with two-thirds to three-fourths of the service employees who would be impacted, Turley said, adding their comments and questions are being brought into the talks with SSC. Some custodians began telling members of the University of Arkansas Education Association / Local 965 of their concerns several weeks ago.

Turley and Cale Fessler, associate vice chancellor for budget, financial planning and business affairs, made the presentation to the Staff Senate and took questions. Fessler said that current employees would face “no reductions in pay.”

“I don’t think we’ve seen enough to to respond and say that yes, we know for sure their pay wouldn’t be competitive relative to ours. With respect to benefits, I think there’s a lot still to be worked through there,” Fessler said. “We would negotiate strongly for that comparable benefit package.”

UA officials first worked with the consulting firm AArete then moved to negotiations with SSC. AArete “has been looking at a whole range of business processes where the university spends money,” Turley said.

The administration does not plan to let competitive bids, Turley said. Other private service providers are not being considered, he said, because SSC is “an approved contractor by the state of Arkansas,” arranged by E&I Cooperative Services and thus “meets all the procurement requirements” of the state.

The main reasons to privatize are fiduciary as in saving money for the university and second to provide a better level of service, Turley told the Staff Senate, adding, “We are constrained by the state on how many kinds of positions we can have, and an outside enterprise isn’t,” with a previous workaround having been to hire temporary labor for some outdoors work.

Turley noted that in the last two years about 40 percent of campus groundskeeping has been handled by two private contractors with the remaining 60 percent by UA staff. An arrangement with SSC on groundskeeping and custodial may be a similar hybrid arrangement, he said.

The final decision on a privatizing arrangement rests with Chancellor Charles F. Robinson.

UA-Fayetteville Education Association / Local 965 board member Mike Pierce, an associate professor of history, has submitted a guest column on the matter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, while another local news outlet has interviewed him on the matter for a future story. The matter will be addressed at the Feb. 22 monthly meeting of the local’s general membership and board.

Ben Pollock and Local 965 President Hershel Hartford serve on the Staff Senate. Meetings of the Staff Senate and Faculty Senate are open.

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This Editor’s Note first appeared in the February 2024 newsletter of UA-Fayetteville Education Association / Local 965. It has been slightly edited here. Ben Pollock is a UA website manager.

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• Local 965 board member Mike Pierce argues “SSC: Not an Employer of Choice: The High Costs of Privatization,” a companion post.
• Professor Pierce is among those interviewed in the 13:18 report “The University of Arkansas Considers Outsourcing Custodial and Groundskeeping Jobs,” broadcast Feb. 21, 2024, on KUAF Public Radio’s Ozarks at Large.
• The campus communications office published “University Conducting Assessment of Custodial and Grounds Services” on Feb. 22, 2024.