Council votes to outsource caretaking at city hall
Saving taxpayers $302,349 annually narrowly overruled preserving well-paid jobs, as council voted 6-5 Monday to outsource janitorial work at the city hall campus after an impassioned debate.
“Rarely can we reduce costs when we are maintaining services and I think we can do this in this scenario,” Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison said as he argued the case for contracting out the caretaking work.
Though it will displace seven full-time and seven part-time CUPE positions paid between $21.76 and $25.61 an hour, administration has promised no one will lose their job with the full-timers shifted into vacant caretaker jobs elsewhere in the corporation. The work is going to GDI Services for $543,540 annually for three years, $302,349 less than the current $845,890 annual cost of paying city workers to do it.
With savings close to $1 million over three years, that money will come in handy at budget time, when the pressures from COVID-19 — including the loss in millions of dollars from former revenue generators like the tunnel, airport and Caesars Windsor — will make for some very tough decisions, Morrison said.
“It may mean we don't have to reduce a service like snow plowing,” he said. “It might mean we can save a swimming pool and it might mean we can keep taxes reasonable.”
Mayor Drew Dilkens cast the deciding vote to approve the outsourcing. Also voting in favour were Morrison, Jo-anne Gignac, Fred Francis, Ed Sleiman and recently elected Ward 7 Coun. Jeewen Gill. Voting against were Fabio Costante, Kieran Mckenzie, Chris Holt, Rino Bortolin and Gary Kaschak, who argued vehemently for preserving decently paid city jobs instead of having a private company pay lower wages with scant benefits.
“We're not just talking about caretakers, you're talking about an ideology,” Kaschak said. “Who's going to be next? Will it be our parks department? Will it be our 311 customer service representatives? Will it be our facilities staff or our IT staff? Once you do this, it's very hard to break and go back.”
Mckenzie said the $302,349 savings is a minimal difference — “a rounding error” — compared to the city's overall budget.
“I find this to be a shameful moment,” he said, remarking on the bitter irony that another item on the council agenda was recognizing employee appreciation month.
Tracey Coda, who has worked full-time hours while classified as a part-time caretaker for the last six years, said her husband is a Caesars Windsor worker who's been unemployed since March. So she is worried that outsourcing will spell disaster for her family. “If my job is outsourced I will lose my hours and I will certainly not be able to feed my family or pay my bills,” she said.
Eli Houad described the many tasks he and his co-workers do during the pandemic that a contracted-out service wouldn't, like delivering packages throughout the building, installing Plexiglas barriers, assembling and adjusting work stations, setting up media events, picking up discarded needles outside and responding to panic alarms in the two buildings — new city hall and 400 City Hall Square.
“I consider myself a caretaker-plus, whatever the city needs,” he said. “We're all yes men and yes women. There's no job too small.”
Their union president, Local 543's Dave Petten, said he's so proud of the role the caretakers have played in preventing the spread of the virus.
“In my mind they are the heroes working in the background to keep us all safe, they are truly the first line of defence against COVID-19,” he said. “So why would you look at contracting this out in the middle of a pandemic?”
The city's manager of facilities, Tom Graziano, told council that administration is “extremely happy” with the quality of work from the caretakers. Outsourcing the city hall caretakers is Phase 2 of a council-mandated plan to outsource all caretakers, a process that started in 2017 with the outsourcing of caretakers at Huron Lodge at a savings of $600,000 a year.
“I do agree the pandemic is not the best time (to outsource) compared to being in the normal situation,” Graziano said in response to council questions.
The mayor defended the financial wins of outsourcing, including contracting out garbage collection, parking enforcement and Huron Lodge caretaking. In all cases, no one lost a job, he said.
He said he'll never apologize for doing things that keeps money in taxpayers' pockets. “I am not here to create jobs, I am here to create an environment for other people to create jobs,” Dilkens said, calling outsourcing the caretaker jobs good for the city.
“I think you'll see no reduction in the service level here at city hall and I think at the end of the day it's just the right thing to do.”