Management change disturbs custodians
By PAM MANSON Staff Writer
Keeping its own house in order apparently has been a problem for the housekeeping company that manages custodial services at the University of Kansas.
KU custodians have been circulating a petition that asks for a change in the company's procedures; the director of housekeeping at the Lawrence campus has been replaced after holding his position for only *x* weeks; a union representative has flied "large of unfit labor practices on our campus" to the City Council of Med Center custodians are distributing flyers that protest the conditions at the center.
American Management Services of Eaglewood, Colo., took over custodial services at the Med Center in April and at the Lawrence campus in December.
George Hewitt, an American Management employee, was put in charge of the housekeeping department on the Lawrence campus. He was replaced Feb. 7 by another American Management employee, David Pelzer. About two weeks ago
Pelzer was replaced as director of housekeeping.
RUSSELL MILLS, University director of support services, said that Hewitt had been replaced because he was not supervising the new housekeeping plan well and that Peitzer was replaced because he had finished his job.
"Peeler was brought in to fill the gap when Hewitt left," Mills said. "He accomplished several objectives and now we ready to concentrate on something else."
Mills said Pelzer had distributed the cleaning equipment and supplies to campus buildings. The new director will emphasize the employees in new cleaning methods.
The decisions to replace Hewitt and Pelzer were made jointly by American Management and University administrators, according to Mills.
American Management's housekeeping program included getting new cleaning equipment, training the employees in cleaning techniques and defining the responsibilities of each employee in written job descriptions.
The program also called for the reduction of the Med Center custodial staff by attrition from 180 to 120 employees and the reduction of the campus staff from 135 to 135 employees.
THE TRANSITION to the new management at the Lawrence campus brought complaints from some of the staff working in the school. One custodian said recently that he had started to circulate a petition among the custodians in Lawrence and Kansas City to protest the staff cuts. Copies of the petition were Mills and to Chancellor Archie R. Dykes.
Custodians at the Med Center also have been protesting the transition to an outside company to handle housekeeping services. They are on a lease that Management took over at the center, some custodians considered a walkout to protest the staff cuts and the larger work areas, Francis Jacobe, their union representative, and others, custodians settled for handling out flyers.
A walkout threat arose again two weeks ago when some Mid Center custodians
protested new written tests the company had initiated for employees.
"No one in the union knows the purpose of the tests," Jacobs, business agent of Local 1132 of the Public Employees Service Union, said. "American Management did not consult with the union when they started these tests."
Jacobs said he sent a letter March 3 to Mills protesting the testing requirements, changes in classification of employees and changes in work procedures.
"THE LAW says the union must be consulted before the changes are made that affect union members," Jacobs said. "Mills said they would never request information about these changes. I'm filing formal charges tomorrow in Kansas Public Em-ployment Relations Board."
Mills said the tests were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the American Management training program. He said last month that he had received a job from Jacobs and had not taken any action.
Jacobs said that some union members planned to hand out fiyāra to visitors from the U.S. at the mosque.
ditions. The flyers say: "Attention Visitors. If you feel the room your loved one is in not as clean as it should be, the employees of the housekeeping department apologize. We are here to help. We are also committed to do we. Are we ashamed of the conditions. Our work areas have been increased and our staff reduced. We are now being instructed to clean only a portion of what we used to feel. Please bear this in mind. Again we feel you must complain. Again we apologize."
JERRY REYNOLDS, director of housekeeping at the Med Center, said the hospital was getting clean under the American Management program.
"We brought in technical advisers who went through the complex and wrote job descriptions for each employee," Reynolds, an American Management employee, said. "We brought in new equipment and supplies. The employees know exactly what to do every day and they have the supplier to do housekeeping is efficient under the system."
Reynolds has kept a log of all letters received about the housekeeping. According to the logs, he had
at the Med Center, the housekeeping department has received 66 letters complaining.
JACOBS SAID the union had handed out flyers last week asking people to give their opinions on the housekeeping service at the Med Center. About 50 nurses, custodians, patients and visitors to the center returned the survey.
"I was amazed at how strongly people reacted." Jacobs said. "The comments ranged from vehement to uncomplimentary. Out of all the comments, only two said the housekeeping department was doing a good job."
Jacobs said the new program was not working because the staff was too small.
"They came in and said they would increase the area each employee had to clean, but they wouldn't increase the work load," she explained in her working, though. They need more people.
Jacobs said a walkout should be a last resort.
“There’s a lot you can do before you walk out or strike,” he said. “I hope I hope charges have on it. If it doesn’t, I’ll just go along with what the union wants to do.”
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vol. 88.No.111
The University of Kansas
Monday March 20,1978
Lawrence, Kansas
Minority grads to get increase in financial aid
By LINDA FINESTONE
Staff Writer
More financial aid will be available for more KU minority graduate students because of action taken this weekend. The executive committee of the University of Kansas Endowment Association agreed to provide a scholarship fund for minority graduate students.
The committee gave approval Saturday to a recommendation by Chancellor Archie R. Dykes to increase by $10,000 money available for the fund, the Post-Baccalaureate Scholarship Fund. The fund increased from $30,000 to $40,000 for the next fiscal year.
The program has been used to aid minority graduate students in the schools of Law, Business, Social Welfare and some sections of the Graduate School.
ABOUT $30,000 was distributed last year
six seventy percent graduate students through
their programs.
Richard Von Ende, executive secretary to the chancellor, said yesterday that the increased funds also would be extended for use as grants to minority graduate students in the School of Engineering and all of the Graduate School.
Dykes said yesterday that he hoped the increase would enable more students to benefit from the fund. He said the Endowment Association had tried to reach as many students as possible through the program.
Von Ende said that although the amounts each school would be able to award had been discussed, he did not know what the final figures would be.
William Lona, adviser to Movimiento Estudiando Chicane de Azlan, a Chicano-Latin student organization, said he thought the program should schools should substantially help the program.
Von Ende said money for next year's grants could not be given out before Aug. 1. However, he said the individual schools begin to select the recipients of the grants.
William Hogan, faculty adviser for the Student Council for Reviewing, Motivating and Educating Black Engineers, also said he was pleased by the action to extend scholarship funds to the School of Engineering.
Marilyn Ainsworth, adviser to the Black American Law Students Association, said last night that she was pleased by the Endowment Association's move. However, she said she would not be sure of the impact of her work and she knew the funds had been divided.
Staff Photo by ELI REICHMAN
After the successful completion of a three-point play with less than a minute to play, Bill Liatmaren of Notre Dame signaled his team to stop playing.
Muscular victory
West regional played at Allen Field house yesterday. The Fighting Irish beat the Blue Demons of DePaul 84-64 and earned the right to advance to the semi-finals, which will occur next weekend in St. Louis and decide the national championship.
McCollum hall lounge fire ruled arson
Rv.JAKE THOMPSON
Staff Writer
A fire in the seventh floor lounge of McColm Hall March 13 that caused an estimated $22,000 damage was deliberately set on a person's腕机, a fire investigator said yesterday.
The investigator, Larry Stemmerman, president of the Douglas County Arson大队, said that he determined the fire definitely was arson and that he would be working with the Lawrence Fire Department and KU police questioning residents and witnesses this week.
Mike Hill, captain of the KU police, said. Evidence in the case is mixed. An investigation laboratory should
THE FIRE, reported by fire alarms at 10:30 p.m., caused smoke damage to the east wing and sent water cascading down the roof. The fire was no damage in the west and south wings.
There were at least two other fires in the hall's trash chants, during the 24 hours before the Monday night fire, according to McColm Hall employees.
be returned this week and might provide leads.
The fire began in some furniture that was piled up in the middle of the room so that the floor could be cleaned and waxed, Stemmerman said.
By the time Brien Moylan, acting resident director during spring break, arrived on the seventh floor, he said, it was filled with smoke.
About 120 residents were evacuated from McCollum and from eight to 14 people may have been on the floor near the time of the fire. No one was injured.
Moylan said be and others raced through the three floors above the seventh floor, knocked on doors and told people to get out. The police said that of many people still were in their rooms.
MOYLAN SAID he, a resident assistant and a security monitor then went to the floors below the seventh to warn residents and had worked their way down to the third floor when water began to flood the hallways.
McCollium has a main fire hydrant on a lower floor and has outlet valves on every floor. Moylan said that at least one water valve on each floor, in the stair wairles,
had been opened and that when the fire department turned on the water system, the firemen were able to stop it.
Because of the loss of pressure to the horses connected to the valve on the seventh floor. Moylan and伊兰 had to go to each floor and turn off the open valves. They spent much of the night mopping the water up with water vacuum cleaners, he said.
One of the residents who didn't leave the fifth floor immediately said he thought it was a false alarm until he heard yelping and calling for help. So false alarms were frequent in McCollim.
**MINTENANCE CREWS** began cleaning up the mess Tuesday, clearing the debris, painting the walls and replacing the tiles to ensure they were safe for students returning during the weekend.
New funding method approved by Regents
By ALLEN HOLDER
Staff Writer
Final approval for a new method of allotting state funds to the University of Kansas was given Friday by the Kansas Board of Regents.
Although the new method, called formula funding, will not take effect until fiscal 1980, Chancellor Archie R. Dykes said yesterday that the six Regents' institutions, including Kcaliburn instructed to prepare their local 180 bus units for the new plan. The budgets are due June 1.
Formula funding, developed by a Regents' committee, would base funding on the actual costs of enrollment rather than on enrollment statistics.
INSTATE FUNDING of Regents' institute number of full-time equivalency students enrolled
Dykes said that enrollment statistics and cost factors both would be important to the program.
Under the new plan, a drop in enrollment would not affect legislative funding for KU as severely as a drop would under full-time students. The funding would be based on actual costs.
Although the Regents' approval of the new method is official, Dykes said the plan still must be endorsed by the Kansas Legislature and Gov. Robert F. Bennett.
Dykes said the Legislature would endure the plan by appropriating money to the Treasury.
If the new system is fully funded by the
Legislature, Dykes said, it could mean additional money for KU. However, he said, if the system is only partly funded, ad- ditional money probably would not be allocated.
"BUT WE'RE interested primarily because it moves the justification for funding more toward program requirements," he said.
Funding under the plan will be patterned after funding of each school's peer influencers.
KU's peer institutions—the Universities of Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon and Oklahoma—were chosen because of the school's strong academic goals and state income levels.
Although KU receives less money now than the average of its peer institutions, the Regents have instructed their institutions to pay $50 for catchup money by June 1. Dwks said.
The catch-up money, he said, would be the amount necessary to bring KU up to the level required.
THE DIFFERENCE between KU's leveling level and levels of its peers has a significant effect.
Dykes said the Regents planned to ask the Legislature for half the catch-up money for fiscal 1880 and one-fourth of the money in each of the next two years.
Dykes said that there had been no opposition to the plan from the Regents.
"The Regents feel this is a new and imaginative approach to the funding of research."
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Capsules From the Associated Press, United Press International
U. N. calls for Israeli withdrawal
UNITED NATIONS — A resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and the creation of a U.N. peace-keeping force was pushed through the Security Council yesterday by the United States. In response to the United Nations' request that Israeli troops were pushing toward the biblical city of Tyre. See story page two.
Mail control, farm bills considered
WASHINGTON—House members will vote today on a bill that would reestablish the house's mail service. Eight years ago they agreed to set forth by setting in the Federal Post Office.
senators are expected to begin considering amendments to the Panama
canadian bill to debate tomorrow or Wednesday to take up
several farm bills. See page story 12.
Direction of coal strike uncertain
CHARLESTON, W. Va.-Coal miners will vote on a new contract Friday in the latest effort to satisfy coal strike. If miners end their contract in the course of an effort to stay in compliance with the contract.
Weather . . .
Temperatures today should reach the mid-78s, according to the National Weather Service. Skies will be partly cloudy and winds should shift to the northwest at 10 to 20 mph late this afternoon.
Skies will be partly cloudy tomorrow. Highs are expected to be in the 60s.
Locally...
Accusations of apathy in and toward student government have arisen recently at the University. In today's editorial focus section, the Kansan takes an in-depth look at IDM strengths, as well as weaknesses, of the Student Senate, the Senate itself, IPC, ASHC, GSC and other student participatory bodies in campus politics.