tonight is about all of you having the opportunity to tell the real story about what it means to work at the university of washington and not be getting the raises or the pay that you need to get by and i've heard struggles myself and this is your opportunity to share that with the panel all of the people here our decision makers who impact funding in the state impact policy at this institution and we're grateful that they're here to listen tonight and i just want to say to a couple quick things about how the format will be we have to floor mike's one here and one here you can line up at the mikes and we will call on you will go back and forth between the two mikes and in order to make sure that everyone gets to speak we're asking that you limit your comments to two minutes and we've got some time keepers who are going to help keep you there to let you know when you're almost out of time so could our timekeepers please stand up so you can see there in front of the mikes they'll let you know when you've got one minute left and then what's the next sign thirty seconds left time to sum it up and then when you're out of time and the reason for this is to make sure that everyone who wants to make their voice heard tonight gets the opportunity and then once we're done with the input from all of you there will be an opportunity for our panelists to respond one other housekeeping we do have an interpreter here tonight who speaks to greene yeah and i'm  so now we'd love to hear from you about what it's like to try to live in king county and work at the university of washington on pay that is very low without any currently no raises that would really make a difference for you and your families you know what money was john for you and we want to set the tone for what we're doing today today we're taking the gloves off today these people are here who have heard stories before we're not asking them to just listen we're asking them to act no question the university of washington is the big is bully employee employer in the state of washington they bully the city of seattle they bully the state and they bully the employees here and it is time that we fight the bully everybody on this panel they have been a many pounds they have hurt many of these stories tonight we're not asking him to just listen we're asking him to help us fight the bully and the bully i i know your struggle i feel your pain she's going to go back to her office and keep that train moving on making sure that people who end up on the street that people in the in tent cities she's going to do what they continue to do at this university so the question is today what do we do what do these people do today we're not asking them to to step before we're asking them to make a commitment to go back to a limpia go back to city hall and do something about it that's what we're asking for i have been at this university for a long time on this change nothing every time we come up for negotiation state tell us the same thing we have no money they mismanage here the the dental center clinic look it's mismanage nobody on their side gets fired one of us come to work late and we are fired that is not right and that is not fair bottom line is this you have to put on your fighting shoes this is this is david and goliath where david david won we can win we can do this but it takes a commitment from people what we have voted for people that we have put up front to say stand up and fight with us because we can't do it alone but we're going to do it we're not i don't care they will take me off this university because we're going to fight and we're going to do what is right so sin that message to these people tonight you we have somebody over here all right please tell us about what it's like to work at the university of washington and what your struggles are with what is the high cost of low pay good evening my name to anybody i'm a plumber s like to think the whole panel for being here tonight to listen or qualms and concerns and hopefully it lands on the good ear my problem my topic of concern was st and foremost with the last contract negotiation and how it was implemented it was implemented on everybody's anniversary ok i'm out eleven months i question at the time when there were meetings how and when i catch up to the person who got that raise in january nobody could give me an answer to this day nobody can answer it i will never catch up ok the way i look at it is the eleven months that they got into my pocket for on th negotiation they will use those eleven months on this next contract to go to negotiation to pay for eleven months of my pay raise so in essence of a two cycle negotiation i'm actually only going to get one for ribs ok they've they've taken it and it was a shifty move i called it for what it was at the time i saw that this is how it was going to unfold and we're living it now ok anybody  address how that could be made right i don't think so ok then the university says two percent or nothing ok well they've already gotten into my pocket for eleven months a pay increase ok i just see it as another form of a pyramid scheme ok they will shift this move here move that they're the people that advance on the top of the pyramid the true on the bottom rungs will never advance they'll never get there just days when they say we'll see what the legislature has to give up we're going to wait to see what they do i can hang my hat on that i need them to commit and tell us no rights right you got wrong thank you for your time cleaning the offices clearly or clean the rooms clean the hallways of hard review so what is presented will for the next patient and for the next employees come for another day so i'm here to help give them a voice and give myself a voice we're tired of being called or degraded as being the help just cleaning people just people who clean up and pick up our garbage we are people who actually do a good job maybe not we don't perform the surgeries but we do do something just as important we get the rooms ready for the patients we 're the ones who make sure the insurances are in place to make the transition from emergency care to proper established care easier for all involved we're here to speak out and say stop mistreating us for enjoying what we do because we do enjoy doing the job we do the institutional racism has become grossly spread throughout the management and the privileged few we have a problem with management training new management with the same will thinking of us and them instead we need a we as a team to work together we have managers for training managers to be disrespectful to their employees by be a little in them personally harassing them for their culture their race and that of english skills that has got to stop coffee a year for free for being members of our preview for being stuff one of this being one of the winter as a think you yeah we get we get double the workload when there's not enough people to work at art or stations  departments we're treated like nd class citizens because of who we are and what we believe and what we can speak and what we can't speak and the two percent that's all  percent i'm here to say no we are more than two percent we are more than two percent hello my name is mary mathias and i was on the very st negotiating team back in two thousand  negotiate a good contract that was particularly helpful for those of us who work at the libraries when the announcement of this town hall came up i was eager to come and talk about these issues  particularly struck me this morning was when i received in the email a message from president that said if i could quote here at the university of washington we measure success by our impact on the world and our communities by that yardstick twenty eight thousand dollars has been a truly incredible year i continued to be moved and inspired by the creative and powerful ways in which our community consistently rises to the occasion especially under challenging circumstances each of us with our unique talents and perspectives makes the u w the remarkable place it is together in twenty eight thousand dollars we celebrated everything from welcoming our largest incoming class of st year and transfer students to  outstanding achievements by our faculty staff and students that set new standards for excellence innovation and creativity whatever brought you to the u w a desire to learn to earn a degree to teach to discover to make a difference i know that together you and this community will create the extraordinary opportunities and experiences with which we will change the world so these are very high goals for us to achieve and they cannot be achieved without the staff the people who work at the university of washington the members of this union and when we get two percent and everybody else every other state employee is getting three and three and they offer as two and two it's  disgraceful you cannot say ok my time's up you know what i mean a state hospital system was created what i see now is you have two hospitals that you manage and two medical schools that you operate that's not a state hospital system is a bunch of clinics that are often losing money and it seems to me that you're balancing us in the last contract cycle we were suddenly you'll have the insurance billing right and both hospitals are hemorrhaging money and that's back on us because what was told us was the hospitals can only sustain two into going forward so that's what we've got is the medical center's running this university why is that self supporting department attorneys operations pay their own bills all the way through and we're putting up with this mismanagement of your medical centers and it all hinges on that just arg we've had concussions this year we've had injuries this year i've been into twice this year i had to go employee health security and harbor view has had a hazard pay of two dollars extra dollars an hour that we haven't seen ourselves in multiple of us have a new a numerous amount of injuries this year we've been coming back you know because again we care about patients but it is been tough and the fact that they get to have has a pin we don't it's criminal we are professionals but we get treated like animals we have the see paul ramsey stand in front of the town meeting and tell us he understands that is institutional racism that was two years ago he hasn't done anything about it nothing when i look at this board up here i don't see any black people up there doesn't exactly the same thing that the people are in the community of seattle walk into harbor view they see white people but no people of color no one on the top level of color it's all white or white women so i'm coming to you today and ask you what are you going to do about this you can't walk around sandwich or with the king county and you represent everybody when you're only representing the white people higher level people they wear the blue the people who are just ordinary day where the regular blue baby blue that is a synchronized so when you see somebody who's wearing black or grey their lower class you're teaching  good evening everyone my name is agnes this is my sister here we've been with the laundry facility for over twenty three years my husband as well works for the laundry so we were notified that we will be laid off by place open it would help a lot of people people that don't have boys people that don't speak english a lot of them i don't think they could even find new jobs because they could hardly speak the language they've been there they work so hard it's manual job they don't need to speak english they just know they're most hardworking people who are there can you please find it in your heart to keep the laundry open washington we are t a s that have seventy percent of the contact hours with undergraduate students were the ones that know the undergraduates names where the researchers that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars into this university from federal funding in order to do science research at this institution and we are discussed it with how the university is treating our union siblings i i want to tell you what it's like to work at the university i'm a ph d student who is studying toxins in parkinson's disease but there is another toxin on this campus and its harassment harassment is an epidemic at this university there is a professor in my department who is a known harasser who has been with the department for decades he gets up in classes and tells jokes that we should drug young women so they're attracted to old men he told us he told a student in a three hundred person class that because he had a middle eastern name he sounded like he should be on the no fly list and last year junior graduate student came to me and in tears because of harassment that she had suffered with this man so we decided to do something about it and we went to the administration the administration did it or did it investigation and they said that there was nothing wrong with this behavior that this this man would not be taken off classes so i went to my union and with the union with our collective action we were able to remove this man and my concern is i'm a single mom and as will smile i'm having a hard time finding no money to send my son to school how much more if this laundry will be close and i know we've been told and we've been promised that they going to give us job but asocial now for people with being hired and some might get interviewed but only a six hours or four hours that been given to them six hours so how are we going to live like that if this thing going to happen how we're going to know how am i going to send my sent to school how am i going to pay my bills and now i'm in double dose of my insight and depression medicine because of what happened so if you have still a good heart left please don't  hi my name is phil salvatore maintenance plumber here at the you dump and i've been here for thirteen years and when i started out our plumbing shop there was four of us all it was one of them yeah but the others are gone they've gone to a higher paying job with the county or the city have gone through five leads right now we're down to two and there's barely to the other guy who's working with me he doesn't even know if you want to stick around because he's being harassed and the pay is low he could make one hundred thousand dollars on the outside very easily he's had offers plenty of offers but that does just goes to show you that as plumbers were not getting paid what we should begin pay were not even close to eighty percent of the outside scale when the university of washington years ago used to be a great place to work because they paid really well considering what they were getting paid on the outside it's a shame that they're not keeping up with times now this all comes down to the fact that we're mean for a possible strike and i don't want a lot of people don't want to see the story because the very last resort but the university doesn't want to negotiate with us anymore which is a bunch of s how come they can't be fair about things i've seen contracts come through and they're not they're garbage they're just total garbage come on be fair with us we were we were here for you every day we i was going to say something different here but you know what i'm going to tell you about my morning i'm working early and late because i'm the lone plumber in my zone so i get up and i go to hutchinson and they've got a plug toilet there  two stalls and i go and look at the tag that thing has been plugged up since september rd two thousand and eighteen you know and this is december th you know in the custodian ran that you can get toilets unplugged for two months there reminds me of one you know when the custodians were trying to get help they were having to do all these open runs so ana marie said you know what we're just going to have to accept less clean buildings so now it appears you're just going to have to accept as long as you have one toilet and one thing on a floor that's good enough now you've got these students who are paying how much money you know you know all they don't hire enough people things keep breaking down you don't want to tell you about what happened this last month we've had flown water main breaks one of them shut down hutchinson and hansie which is a dorm they were terrified that it was going to shut down the new will's dorm you know so what do those students do when they call up their parents oh yeah you know we had to go to another building to go take a crap and take a shower at the great university a lot in turn you know have they seen it happen and if they haven't seen it happen they need to fire all those people who didn't see it happen because they're making all the money they're making other decisions are us you know officials the city and county officials you need to hold the university a combo for the money they get i know higher it needs more money but you need to figure out were other spending this money it's not on the employees it's not on the facilities thank you spirits are running a little high in here so i'm going to slow down old school ok so what they told me when i came here was i was critical personnel so that meant if it was snowing if it was raining if there was a it didn't matter i had to be here ok so we got people in the medical facility including the laundry which is cleaning and sterilizing the bed sheets for the patients the patient we've got the power plant we've got people like me electricians we've got elevator workers we've got all sorts of people here who plumbers yeah you know a plumbing problem that you could have ok we have people here who have to be here for the safety of the people who use these facilities including the hospital and now we're talking about a strike and we're talking about a strike because people are not bargaining in good faith like it says in the contract and not now right now i'm not talking to the university i'm talking to the state budgets are we not state employees that i heard that someplace now if the state legislature cannot get involved in this and figure out how to give their employees for king cole increases when somebody is not doing their job and i'll tell you i'm a lead electrician for the central zone i bring it every day i very little margin for error ok so i expect professionalism from everybody in the university think about going to work without your clothes on clothes are not a priority there are value your way around ok and so is safety it's a value you don't compromise it thank you volume neurosurgical clinic so if you've got a tumor in your spine you're probably going to see my doctor if you've been in a car accident in montana and you need emergency work to stabilize your spine you're probably coming through  i'm dealing with dozens of people a day on the phone providing excellent customer service as are my coworkers cawley so i want to because we hear a lot from our management who i'll just say can't be any more out of touch that one of the pillar goals we want to achieve and i assume they mean all of you is making the university of washington an employer of choice if you're making you dublin employer of choice why have i heard from a than forty hours a week why are we here in the if we are that you are doing your jobs making you dubbed the employer choice we should work forty hours i won't come in and do overtime but they won't give it to us but they pressure us more work less time and i'm sorry but you're not living up to the pillar goal i'm going to be four years in january essentially haven't trained myself to do the job i was thrown into working for the chairman of the department from day one i trained myself by asking questions of people who may not be there in a year so how are you making you double to deploy of choice with management who acts the way they do who is piling on more and more work and you're giving us two percent i'm sorry that's not cut and i normally don't speak at these issues but i want to the president of the university here my comments because you're hearing from custodians and i always thought well i'm white collar i don't have that as bad but i'm beginning to think i may have to leave my job and i want you know i'm proud to wear this i probably what i do and i've heard people tell me all of this you harbor views not a great place to work am there because it's the only level one trauma center in a five state region i'm proud of what i do my doctor got hired right out of his whatever proclivity it was and i built as practice and i'm probably i work with people who are wallace come in early stay late come in on saturdays to get the work done they're just asked to be treated fairly by management like tell you it doesn't happen i've been bullied by management i've been treated unfairly just you know by not i'm just going to tell you just i miss him the tell you this story about this person that was on their way to work one morning she got hit in the crosswalk on her way to work she after coming back trying to recover from her injuries her boss along with this supervisor harasses her every single day the last thing  class thing they want to hear your words the last thing that they said to her ok you know the last thing that they said to her was if you can't do the job go find another job that right there is not a place that i would like to work or any of you would like to work i want to come to work and do a good job if you want to motivate us motivate us in a positive way not in a when the recession was on i think that everybody in this room if you've been working here for ten years came to work we basically was working for the u w for no raises did get no raise for what i think it was maybe five hundred and ten years ok even before the recession ok we were working we go to the bargaining table and all they want to do is offer sed two percent we tried to negotiate with him and asked him really is that all you want to pay us they said yes i don't understand how if you are managing a budget that you don't put your employees in that budget to where all you have to do is offer them two percent you know that's not going to make us work any harder or any more we need the money now not later on not your next budget now so please take it in your heart and take it away from here and do something do something right thank you hello drew i work in the facilities position and i'm not sure if there's any other gardeners here but if you are high so i'm fairly new been here a little over half a year and while i don't have a whole lot of experience that sort of seeing what the university is like to work for i have talked to a lot of people and i have sort of gotten my impressions here and there and i guess the most important thing for me to share is that you know working for the gardener shop we do jobs that are absolutely essential to the functioning of the university we keep when  see that reflected in our wages and i just think that you know what if the university wants to really set an example and you know really just keep everything running and keep everyone happy they're going to have to pay attention to the voices of the people who keep everything open keep everything safe for the students and the faculty and you know really working as a gardener it's very dangerous we do put our parties our lives out on the line there every day running wood chippers you know using you know really dangerous equipment and you know there is a lot of you know we're always told to do everything safe during things safe but you know it's there is so much work to do and there are so few of us we do feel a pressure to get more done than is reasonable the name of our and i'm a graduate student in political science here and i wanted to talk a little bit about president callas say in two thousand and fifteen you launched the race in equity initiative and as a woman of color that means a lot to me and on the website it says that in order to support and sustain diversity in equity it you as well as in the local regional and global communities we serve we must directly confront bias and racism at the individual institutional into stomach levels and these include confronting individual bias and racism transforming institutional policies and practices accelerating systemic change now what i want to know is how you morally reconcile this initiative with laying off over one hundred workers and thinking that workers here you many of whom are immigrants people of color can survive on two percent a year if you think that's justified i'd love for you to live out our salary and see what got you know from president how say tonight right now what you think about that how do you reconcile those two things your initiative for race and equity and the fact that you're laying off workers and think that they deserve only two percent a year so there will be a chance for the panelists bond that we're doing that after the workers speak but thank you i think you kitchens and everything out throughout campus with that we have right now thirteen employees from the supervisor love about we're supposed to have seventeen we haven't had a full crew of seventeen in the last three years we have shown the leads and the supervisor gotten together put the numbers together and shown over and over again that we could hire five other workers that would be eighty five percent paid for by housing have to understand the southwest's own we work in the black we make a five hundred thousand dollars a year that we take that money and give two hundred thousand of it to others own still make their budgets look good we make money gone through i said we can make more money we have the jobs we're so far behind other workers in the carpenter lead i want my carpenters retired this year i gave up that position to get another electrician or machinery mechanic we had had a machinery mechanic and to yours we have just found out today that we finally are getting to know employees will be m m once the lowest level of the staff that we have will be filter techs and lighting techs too i couldn't i couldn't spend thirty minutes here to explain to you what that means when we have these brand new dorms going in we went up the other day and found filters that hadn't been changed since we put them in the maple hall which was two years old has places that have filters that have never been changed you know it's unbelievable and we why are the leaves in the supervisor's going and proving to management that we could hire employees and make money all these managers we've hired for new managers in the last couple of years at six figures each why why are they doing this job why aren't they showing the legislature that they could make money in printing money and why are we doing it why do i spend my time showing chart after chart after chart of all the work orders that we have that we haven't gotten done that we could be getting done with these employees thank you thousand dollars increase immediately he got a three five percent increase in pay every year he's been gone for three years i didn't the feeling here that everybody here understands that we're all caretakers of the university or you wouldn't be here we all do what's necessary to take your university i take care of your house mrs cook house say i do the work the painting and everything in your house i can't tell you the passion and the commitment that these people have right here to take care of your university and you're not paying us accordingly and i'm looking for another job i could if i could go to the states state city of seattle i've already applied for several different positions if i leave i get a ten thousand dollars raise it's seven percent on my pension and it's the best of two years not five i mean there is no beneficial for me to be here the only reason i'm here is because i love the university and i love you people and we take care of each other time we've come together as a crew and right now we stand on the presidents of being able to strike we've never had this momentum in our lives and in our since i've been here eighteen years john you know what i'm talking about the time is now if we can't get this done if you can't see in your heart to see the passion right here in front of you the commitment to us to take care of the university you need to take care of us right now you need to take care of it's our time you had your time when i came here the director was making sixty thousand dollars a year he now makes one hundred and eighty dollars i mean come on that's ridiculous that is not fair it's not equal and the passion that we have here you need to do to protect that because we could all just leave we could all go get other jobs you know and it's important you understand that we stand for something and we need to get paid we need an increase thank you good evening my name is fav and what it is thank you all for being here today i'm an immigrant st generation college graduate i work at harborview medical center as a p s s this thank this january it will be ten years of service i've been maxed out for several years that i forgot where my last increase was i love my job but the unfair treatment has got to stop my mother my family and friends work for you they work ask stole billions as hospital assistance and also as food service staff the majority of these employees in these positions are people of color immigrants and refugees i speak on behalf of the voiceless they are overworked underpaid bullied harassed on a daily intimidation from f management poor work conditions retaliation for speaking up a toxic workplace this is a threat to their livelihood to their children they have been in these positions for ten and thirty years and they are on they are unable to catch up with the high costs of seattle of the high cost of living in seattle we want action we want commitment we want follow up the bottom line is we need change and the time is now i think a p s s in the radiology department at harborview medical center last week i called for a hospital system to come take a patient to a different department for their next appointment she told me she could not she was the only one for the entire hospital and she could not come and attend to this patient to take them to the next because she cannot leave her area and her lunch was going to be three how how can we do patient st how can we do patient st if this is what's happening i have a hospital system here who's been working for over thirty years tell us twenty over twenty years and her name is to how she wants to say a few words thank you we work hard and the hospital assistants i've been working for twenty years i have kids and everything is expensive now and they pay so less than an we need more money so