Photo: Courtesy of Britt Pierro
By Allegra Simpkins
The Evergreen State College’s Facilities Services program is currently undergoing significant changes within its organizational structure. Many issues have arisen over the last six months, generating massive concern regarding the program’s ability to serve its employees and the campus community.
This past September, the college was hit with a number of fines from Labor and Industries (L&I), totaling $135,000 due to asbestos and safety violations. The fines are the result of two investigations that opened in March of 2019, after a Facilities Services employee filed complaints that include lack of training and exposure to hazardous materials without proper protection. TESC had an opportunity to appeal the fines, but ultimately did not argue the findings.
“This is a journey,” William Ward, the associate vice president of Facilities Services, told the Cooper Point Journal (CPJ). “We are addressing things that have accumulated over the years. We’re very confident that we’re going to get things right.” Of the ongoing problems being addressed, the most pressing by far, according to Ward, is the organizational structure of the Facilities Services program itself.
The program underwent a restructuring of it’s functions in 2008 (which is available via the Facilities’ website under “organizational functions chart”) and while it includes a relatively straightforward list of responsibilities, Ward explained that there never was much of a system for how these functions operate in collaboration with its workers.
Matt Lebens, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) coordinator, has been employed by the college for 21 years, working in various departments and even holds two degrees from TESC. His expertise is an integral part of the development and implementation of the new organizational structure. Lebens has seen firsthand, the common problem of miscommunication or even in some cases no communication at all, from the top to the bottom and vice versa. He holds his boss’ decisions in high regard, stating, “William has been instrumental in communicating with the folks that we have in the field and making sure that we’re doing the right work with the number of staff we have.”
Labor and Industries made a number of discoveries during their investigations, one being the issue of asbestos safety. It is now widely known that asbestos is likely present in facilities built before 1970, as it is an effective insulator and used for its extreme resistance to heat. Lebens explained that much of what L&I found was a lack of monitoring systems necessary for a facility the age and size of The Evergreen State College, which was founded in 1967. “We need to elevate our monitoring program,” he said. “We need to make sure that the college has more than one person who’s capable of doing this.”
The monitoring program would ensure the known location of asbestos materials and the continuous onlooking for changes and safety hazards regarding them. Lebens continued, that because of the short-staffing “it’s absolutely essential that as we determine what [these] workloads happen to be, that [the workers] are going to go about it in the safest steps, which is the part that takes time.”
Currently, Facilities Services does not have an asbestos worker program, and developing one that is up to date, consistent, and widely implemented is one of those steps that has taken some time. Lebens also says that, “right now we’re at ground zero so we’re in a position of, for the first time, coming up with the appropriate documents and job files that we can deploy to folks future forward.” These documents and job files would outline the hazards of each job, which were not clearly communicated to workers in the past.
According to a previous CPJ article entitled “Structural Issues” from June earlier this year, “one worker said that he was never directly told that there was asbestos or what the exact dangers were,” and after seeing emails confirming the presence of asbestos, he stated that “none of this info was shared widely.” Both Lebens and Ward admitted the necessity of a more consistent feedback loop between workers and the senior level.
Albeit a slow process, Lebens now has two certified inspectors that have been properly trained for asbestos monitoring and he is “just a number of weeks away from being able to cut them loose on their own independent work.”
The department is also working to create an Accident Prevention Program (APP) that will essentially be an umbrella covering the various areas of Facilities Services that require specific safety training including but not limited to asbestos, confined spaces, chemical hazards, and fall safety (i.e. ladders). Lebens calls APP a “critical leg of our safety and health management program…so what we’ve got right now is just an overall update of the Accident Prevention Program with the intent of getting it back to the supervisors.” He then stressed that the only way a program like this will work for an institution this size is to be sure it is being implemented the way it was intended, all throughout the department.
With enrollment at an all-time low, and dropping, TESC has experienced a massive financing problem. This has resulted in program cuts and budget cuts that slice deeply and directly into its student body and staff. Because of these consistent budget cuts, the Facilities Services is functioning with about 50 percent of the number of workers it has typically employed in the past; so on top of all the other changes, they are doing the same amount of work with half the staff, making worker safety a real priority.
Despite the vast array of challenges the Facilities department will face for some time, one worker is pleased with the direction the program is headed. Rickey Lee Haney, who was featured in the previous “Structural Issues” article stated “now that we as an institution are giving more focus and resources to the EHS office it’s increased some bandwidth to get out and consult with those working.” Haney, who was dramatically affected by the lack of structure of the Facilities department, suffered an inguinal hernia last February while working what would have been a 51-hour shift during the snowstorm that suspended campus operations. “So [yeah] granted,” Haney expressed, “more work with less workers; but I can honestly say that we’re doing it safer than even just a few months ago, because of the focus and the attention.”
Facilities Services acknowledges that this is going to be a long process, and Ward vehemently declared that he “intends to leave no stone unturned.”
