As a longtime University employee in Facilities Services, I have zero confidence in the University’s capability or willingness to do what is needed to keep workers safe from COVID-19.
It seems to me that the response so far has been heavily biased toward white-collar workers with, as far as I’m aware, little input from rank-and-file workers. This could have fatal consequences for certain groups of employees.
Black Americans bear a disproportionate share of fatalities from COVID-19. Housekeeping is a predominantly Black and BAME workforce with the lowest wage earners in the University. This makes these workers particularly vulnerable. As far as I am aware, this disproportionate vulnerability has not been factored in.
Their plans might be praiseworthy if they were to be fully resourced and their protocols vigorously enforced, but this will not happen. Therefore, these low-paid, marginalized workers will be put at real risk of death.
The Chancellor can give us all the usual guff about the "Carolina family" and the old Tar Heels all pulling together, but their whole approach reflects the institutional and structural racism and implicit bias inherent in the administration.
Whatever policies they might come up with will be undermined by two factors: their previous inability and or unwillingness to enforce other policies currently in place, and an unwillingness of some sections of the facilities workforce to wear masks or observe social distancing.
For many years, we’ve had a no smoking in state vehicles policy. It is clear and unambiguous and never, ever enforced. Facilities employees and many supervisors routinely flout this policy with no consequence.
The no-smoking policy has never been enforced in any manner, thereby allowing hidden corners of the campus to become despoiled by the detritus of the smoking scofflaws.
Other more consequential policies — if and when they are enforced — are enforced in arbitrary and inconsistent ways, depending on the whims of supervisors and HR’s bias in favor of management.
