- What is the cost to the college in monitoring contracts with subcontractors?
- Is the subcontractor paying utility costs such as electricity, water and gas?
- How much IT support will be needed? If the subcontractor needs access to Banner, wifi, Lane’s internal network, Lane’s phone system… the impact to IT could be quite high. Who pays for that?
- How about the Facilities Trades people and our Custodial Staff? Do subcontractors reimburse the college for these labor costs?
- Who will pay for the repair and maintenance of Facilities? The college or the subcontractor?
- We just invested $5,260,000 in the Titan Store remodel and $1,858,000 in the Food Services remodel. Will those not part of Lane’s family feel the pride in those new facilities (Titan Store and Food Services) and care for them as our employees do?
- What is the expense of transition now?
- What if it doesn’t work out? What will our start up costs be?
- We had Taco Time on our campus many years ago. What happened? Why are they gone? Can we learn from that?
- We outsourced our Laundry a few years back. Have we analyzed the impact to the college for that? One source (CML) shared that they now have to work with 3 different laundry vendors to meet their needs and they pay an extra 16,000 a year. And that doesn’t include the labor of managing 3 different vendors.
- Might Food Services be able to show improvement now that there is stable management after multiple years of erratic leadership?
- The Book store and Food Services are clearly services we need. Shouldn’t we help fund them as a service now and then when enrollment turns around again they can contribute to the General fund as before?
- Barnes & Noble (B&N) are a for profit company. How will OER (Open Education Resource) materials be supported by B&N? Will they raise prices for textbooks to make up for losses from OER? Whether they raise book prices, or refuse to provide OER materials, this is a cost that passes directly to our students.
- What about our student employees? These jobs support than in more ways than just the income.
- What about control over choices of business hours of operation, days of operation, over summer, winter, spring breaks, etc?
- If B&N retains Lane employees but pay their employees less and offer less benefits, how will that inequity of pay impact the employees working together?
- Will the employees of a subcontractor such as Barnes and Noble be around long enough to get to know student and employee faces and offer that personal touch?
- What are the other hidden issues that will show up when we share space with people who are not part of Lane’s family?
Ideas for restructuring:
- One idea is to shift some personnel FTE to the General fund for those employees who have duties in line with other employees at the college.
- There are ideas for merging the services in creative ways to make the departments more streamlined to avoid duplication of services such as finance and IT services.
- There could be savings in changing hours of operation.
Example of outsourcing at Lane, when we eliminated the Contracted Plumber position:
Year |
Contracted Plumbing Cost |
Cost in that Year to have had an In-house plumber at Level 12/highest step |
2014 |
$65,578 |
$53,987 (base salary). Salary + OPE: $89,079 |
2015 |
$38,820 |
$54,527 (base salary). Salary + OPE: $89,424 |
2016 |
$53,149 |
$54,527 (base salary). Salary + OPE: $89,424 |
2017 |
$78,071 |
$55,345 (base salary). Salary + OPE: $90,766 |
2018 |
$63,293 |
$56,788 (base salary). Salary + OPE: $93,700 |
The above shows the cost of having a plumber called to campus for work that requires a licensed plumber. This does not include the labor costs distributed to other trades for doing other types of work that a full time plumber would do, but work that we don’t need to call in a licensed plumber to perform. And it does not include the labor costs of other FMP Trades running to deal with emergencies. The costs above show what we are paying a subcontractor for part time work not full time employment. It is not an apples to apples view of the change of eliminating a full time plumber. When assessed as above the only year that would perhaps be a true savings is 2015. This in no way reflects the impact on other trades people filling in the gaps while still doing their regular full time work. The above is the kind of data analysis that leaves so much of the reality of the situation out of the equation.
Please consider there is always hidden costs to outsourcing that we often miss or perhaps ignore.
One last thought about Bargaining in Good Faith; If the essence of the Bargained Contract holds wages as it’s heart, then job security might be viewed as it’s soul. Job security means we do not sub out work to others that we can do ourselves. I can promise you we will do it better!