Opinion: UNC must take real action to ensure employee rights

On March 26, a former housekeeping employee filed a lawsuit against the University, reminding it of a transgression that has yet to be fully reconciled. A transgression that is unique from previous ones but also indicative of a broader problem: a lack of adequate oversight within the administrative structure to prevent exploitation.

In a lawsuit, Clifton Leon Webb, a former zone manager in the housekeeping department, said he was demoted and eventually fired by the department because he blew the whistle on a sex-for-hire scheme run by former housekeeping director Bill Burston.

In order to preserve the values that this university supposedly upholds, the University must reform its reporting and enforcement mechanisms to ensure this can never happen again.

The allegations in the lawsuit also highlight inequities in gender power dynamics in the workplace.

Ben Triplett, assistant director in the housekeeping services department as well as a defendant in the lawsuit, attended a discussion on Tuesday about making the workplace for women more inclusive.

“Most of our department is women, but we have challenges internally in terms of trying to encourage women to apply for and seek leadership positions,” Triplett said at the event.

But if the case filed last week is any indication, administrators will have to take action much more substantive than attending a discussion and lamenting the department’s lack of inclusivity.

The department requires a sea change in its culture.

Webb’s lawsuit is only the latest documentation of corruption in the housekeeping department. In 2011, an outside consulting firm found the department was riddled with problems. That report found that non-English speaking employees feared retaliation if they ever told anyone about the management structure they felt cared little for them. The report also said employees witnessed or were targeted by inappropriate sexual behavior on the job.

Employees overwhelmingly told the consulting firm they didn’t know the policies UNC put in place to protect them — making it impossible for the employees to raise or address the problems that wracked the department.

Following the release of the 2011 report, UNC said it would create a committee of housekeeping employees to advise administrators on issues facing the department.

The University also promised to commission a study that would determine pay discrepancies in the housekeeping department.

Finally, the University said it would continuously review the department’s recruiting and hiring practices.

But if Webb is to be believed, any attempts to rectify these problems have been ineffective. It’s time for the University to follow through on these promises and to make new, more actionable promises that will impose integrity.

Many housekeepers are Burmese refugees with little English comprehension or language skills and almost no financial stability.

Going forward, the University should ensure employees with little English skills have adequate training to understand their rights.

Furthermore, it should do better to educate its employees about their options for disclosing complaints to administrators above their direct supervisors — options the University so proudly touted as remedies already in place to ensure another athletic-academic scandal wouldn’t happen again upon the release of the Wainstein report.

The University obviously failed to address the rampant problems in the housekeeping department after the 2011 review.

This lawsuit dually serves as a means to get justice for Webb and as a reminder that the University has not fulfilled its promises to fully protect its employees. Without completely addressing the systemic issues within the administrative structure and the unprincipled culture that pervades the University’s response to whistleblowing, it will be unable to move on from this dark period.