By Molly Welby 

Frustrated, ignored and overlooked, students and workers alike have banded together to petition University of Maryland President Darryll Pines for improved health and safety conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Memorandum of Understanding between the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and UMD is set to expire this June. While it includes some health and safety policies for employees, there have been no amendments made to include additional precautionary measures under the coronavirus pandemic.

Emily Fox, a junior politics, philosophy and economics student at UMD and active member in AFSCME Local 1072, said that the Memorandum of Understanding aims to give workers input on their conditions of employment. The memorandum is negotiated every three years between AFSCME Local 1072 and university administration representatives and is ratified by a majority vote of bargaining unit employees, according to the AFSCME website. 

Correspondence from the university states that this memorandum includes health and safety matters, but the unprecedented pandemic leaves gray areas surrounding personal protective equipment, contact tracing, vaccination distribution and the threshold of cases for university-wide shutdown.

AFSCME Local 1072 represents over 3,400 workers, including bus drivers, dining service staff, maintenance workers, academic advisors, counselors and housekeepers. Its communication with the university has been integral in increasing health and safety standards for UMD workers.

Since March 20, 2020, representatives from AFSCME have met weekly with the university to discuss issues and concerns related to the pandemic, including employee relations and university announcements and updates, according to a university statement. Yet many workers still see discrepancies between the university’s intentions and its actions.

Crystal Foy, a university housekeeper and an active member of United Students Against Sweatshops Local 54, said she noticed lax contact tracing procedures and a lack of communication regarding COVID-19 cases among housekeepers.

“If they know that an employee’s not going to be there for 14 days because they are out with corona, instead of them going to go handle that equipment, spray it down, wash it down, take the precautionary measures you need, they don’t do that. It’s like a big secret,” Foy said. 

In residence halls, housekeepers allegedly are not being notified that they are cleaning a bathroom that a sick resident may have used, according to Michael Marinelli, a senior English student and resident assistant at UMD. 

In response to an inquiry, the university said that the Department of Residential Facilities “typically” sends a notification the same day it confirms a positive case and that the department provides the building and floor of the case along with safety reminders.

The university has done a poor job of following adequate contact tracing guidelines for students and workers, according to Marinelli. Workers within the union have carried the responsibility of notifying each other when someone falls ill, he said. 

Fox said she unintentionally delivered the news to several housekeepers that they had been exposed to the virus by a coworker. 

“I was tasked with calling people she was working with and checking in with them asking ‘What did your manager say to you? Have y’all gotten tested?’ to make sure that the university’s rolling out the protocol, and the people that I talked to have never even heard that their coworker had coronavirus,” Fox said.

A lack of cooperation from the university, which claims it has communicated to the union its desire and intent to begin collective bargaining negotiations over successor agreements since November 2020, has forced AFSCME to take its demands to the Maryland State Labor Relations Board, according to Fox.

“Our union is working to pass legislation (SB-09) this year in the Maryland General Assembly to propose a switch to consolidated bargaining for Higher Education workers,” AFSCME tweeted in January. 

Bill SB-09 would provide University of Maryland and certain system institution employees with collective bargaining rights and would allow for negotiation of the memorandum, according to the Maryland General Assembly website. 

“The president not responding to the union asking to bargain is not a good look being the president of the University of Maryland, College Park — it doesn’t help with what we’re trying to do, it doesn’t open up the lines of communication,” Foy said. 

Featured image: UMD is one of the only public universities in Maryland that does not yet have consolidated bargaining for its workers. Photo courtesy AFSCME Local 1072.