Feelings During Layoff Period

Eugene — Now, there was a lead up, actually, for years there were murmurs of this. You would think there would be a meeting of the minds, there would be financial meetings and things like that. Your spidey sense was definitely tingling that they wanted to, you know, outsource us or bust our union. [...] And what really, kind of, was a slap in the face to me was, if I'm a union buster and I'm saying, the college is broke, and they can't afford us anymore, even though as a union person every study that I've ever read as a union person [said] if they outsource it ends up costing them more money. But that's neither here nor there. They did it [in] the nicest, most refurbished building on the whole campus. [...] Everywhere that you looked, there was, you know, new buildings going up. And then they say, "well, I guess we don't want to maintain them. You're out."

Jack — On Thursday we came into work and about noon, 1:00, we got a phone call from our union president Eric Villar, and he told us, he says, "hey, I got bad news for you, you guys were terminated" I said, "terminated?" "Yeah. They're doing away with your jobs. You no longer have a job." I said, "that's impossible because we just looked at our schedules till Christmas." He said, "I just got the call from Human Resources and president Ambar and the board decided that you guys are gone, too." And we called our bosses, he was like, "No, that's not right. That can't." But yes it was. He said, "Don't go no where, let me call and see what's going on, let me find out." So about 20 minutes later, he called us back and he didn't know what to say to us. All he could say was, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And we're like, "What do you mean you're sorry?" We had no--we didn't get a 30 day warning notice, a 60 day warning notice, we had like, nothing. We were totally blindsided.

Mary — When the college went to the union and said, "AVI gave us $6 million and they're going to renovate our kitchens," and so they're gone. Brandon. You know, they had that deal made before they even started negotiating. You don't make a deal like that overnight. 

Mary — The stress on the campus was ridiculous. We weren't even acknowledged by Ambar. We didn't even exist. She gives this -- God, I'm going to swear, I gotta watch myself [laughs]. She gives this big fricking speach about "thank everybody for the help with COVID, getting the kids off campus. I personally was on campus with my car moving students out. I was running boxes. I was helping kids pack. We never even were acknowledged. When she thanked everybody, security, trades... Everybody except food service and the custodians. We weren't acknowledged on that campus anymore. I'm sorry, I'm going to say it but I thought, what a rude bitch you are. That you could even treat people like this. You are destroying people's lives and making and acting like you are negotiating and you care. Rebecca Skillings an some of her bullshit, like when we went to the field house and we had the meeting where [they said] "If you want to apply we still want you." And it was like, you know what, lady? It's just disgusting. And I hear she makes over $1 million, so please don't tell me...And I realize you are going to pay people for what they're worth is but...give me a break.

Vince — I thought the people who, y’know, did the custodial work, the food service. We took pride in the student like we were a family, you know? And it just it devastated me knowing how the morals of the college are. Okay. We're not we don't want to keep these people. We want to outsource and bring in ABC Company to do this, not knowing what's going to happen.

Pat — I was probably the last of all the custodians that ever believed they would actually go through with it…Because I was the one saying, People, just come in every day and do your job. Do your job and prove to them that they need you…Because people's attitude was, if we're not going to have a job, I'm not giving it my all. I'm not killing myself for them who don't want me.

Ted — We went over there, everybody was there, you know, because this was a contract you're going to have to vote on. So when we get in there, then they start talking and we're not, we don't see no contract. They're not showing a contract, he says, you know what, we're not even gonna go have, we're not gonna have you vote on this. Wait a minute, I worked at unions for 37 years and it was Steelworkers, it was the same thing. Whenever it was time for a contract, they couldn't, you didn't, no contract it. You got to see your contract, you know, or you took a vote on it too. If you were going to look at the contract, whatever. That's, not even showing us a contract and knowing there was a clause in there that if you don't accept this contract and the right to outsource, I mean, it was an illusion. Why wouldn't you? You have all these people. Let us decide if it's going to be a dollar cut, you know, some money, a money cut, and it's going to be a decrease in some of benefits that we should have decided our fate, not one person saying, hey, we've ain't even gonna show you guys this.

Lori — I literally cried through the whole thing, I think. And I asked the last question to that Rebecca. It wasn't really a question, I just said, "What, what is going on here?" Like what I just said to you: "At one time, everybody stayed. We stayed here till we retired." And not just the workers, I'm talking the managers and everything. And, we'd work our way up and some of us would become managers. We'd go into different departments, you know, we just stayed at the college, because, you know, we enjoyed working there. It was a good place to work. And then I just said, Well, what happened? Now these people, you're lucky if they stay two years and they're out the door. You know, and I said, in the time I've been here, I saw what--four presidents? There was Fred Starr, Nancy Dye, Krislov, and then Ambar. I said I saw four presidents come and go and I don't know, they just started creating all these--. There were so many deans and so many vice presidents, why do you need all those? In other words, they were beefing up the administration and then they were downsizing the service jobs, the faculty.

Pat — I thought they were just bluffing. I really thought they were just bluffing. I never thought it would actually happen.

Mary — The first thing they do is they get rid of their union workers, because you can't change that for money wise, to make their books look better. When they get rid of union workers, when they go to apply for bonds and stuff for big projects. Their bond rating goes up. Oberlin's bond rating was really low when I was working there. When they got rid of us, from what I understood, it went up.

Eugene — There were cost saving measures that could have been enacted that made total common sense, instead of just throwing the baby out with the bathwater… It was illogical. That's actually what it was. It felt like we acted like a disposable unit, and it felt like you were just a used piece of toilet paper. 

Marsha —The first thought was my kids, it wasn't just going to be me suffering, it was gonna be my children suffering as well. The fact of, what am I gonna do if this goes through and they do outsource us all? There's a global pandemic. How am I going to provide for my children? How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to buy necessities that my family needs? And then it sank in that I just had a kidney transplant, what am I going to do with no job and no health insurance?.

Pat — But we were still holding on to hope. And part of me feels that they didn't want us to vote on that contract, because if there was enough of us that if we voted on it, we would vote to keep it, to accept it, to keep our jobs. And then if we accepted it then their benefits, some of their benefits got cut down to what others have.

Jeff — So, literally everyone knew that this was bullshit and not fair, but again, Carman Ambar and the trustees were--excuse me, Carmen Ambar and the trustees ARE, not were, this has not changed, they are too embedded in that neoliberal approach to finances, which is cut costs wherever you can and damn the results. So I knew nothing was going to happen because these monsters had already made their decisions.

Pat — [Did you feel like the professors were supporting the custodians?] I did feel like the bulk of the professors did. I didn't personally know a lot of the other professors. I know there was a couple in king/rice, I couldn't tell you what their names were, that were, [professors] had wrote articles for newspapers and--. I don't know of anybody per se that wasn't in support, that wanted to see the union broke. But I think overall, you know, the professors probably looked at, well, if what they can do, if they can do this to them, what can they do to us?

Michele — Because with all the students being sent home, they didn't have the students didn't have the opportunity to protest Oberlin. Oberlin students have always had a voice. And they make their voices heard, which is something that's fantastic for them. But because they were all sent home, it made it easier for the college because they didn't have the kids in the background. You know, raising their voices and saying, Hey, this isn't fair. This isn't right. Look what you're doing to these people.

Jack — We- we didn’t do anything wrong, we weren’t criminals. But that’s how they treated us. My my work partner, Larry Ramey, who worked 40 years at the college, maybe even more. But I'm pretty sure it's 40, at least 40 years he was there. He told them he was taking beautiful things that all the coaching staffs and stuff got him as gifts for over the years of services. And he was taking that home and security and stuff was questioning him as to if that--he got so mad he says take this stuff, this man hardly ever curses, he says, "take this F'n stuff and stick it up your ass. I don't want it just," and he was mad. He said, "this is how you treat somebody that's given you a lifetime of service to this place?!" And I was heartbroken for the man. He only had--okay, we lost our jobs in August, September, October, in November-- he had only three months to go till he could retire.

Jack — One of the biggest hurts that I have is, I got cut short about seven years for putting the on my retirement, and I'm not going to meet my goals now to be able to retire comfortably and that's a problem. When you first start at the college-- when I started, they sat us down and we met with the TIAA-CREF representative and they said, "Where would you like to be? Let's get yourself a portfolio going so that when you retire, you'll retire comfortably." Well, that was taken away from me seven years early. And the new administration that came into the college, all they kept saying was, "oh we're paying, we're paying the employees too much, they're not worth what they're getting paid." I took offense to that actually because, number one, our union always accepted what was offered to us within reason. We never strong armed them into a strike, we only asked for a livable wage, and we asked for decent benefits. And when President Ambar came on, she cut out people from dining services, cut out people from custodial staff. Her opinion was we were getting too much money and benefits, but my fellow coworkers, we were, we're really not making that much money there. The benefits was what we were working there for, the retirement, they were matching us 3% of our maximum 3% that we were puttin' into to retirement, and I thought that was fair. Our wages were within reason for Lorain County and for somebody to come that has no vested interest in the students, the town, or the employees who come in, and start saying things like that. I don't think she had a very good grasp of things. They brought her in to be a hatchet person and somebody to get rid of the union, I believe.

Anon — I mean. As much as the college wants to put on the veneer of being a capital L Liberal institution. They play in with the mascot wears Birkenstocks and is gender fluid and that's cute. But it's not, it's a neo-liberal institution and it does neo-liberalism things. It is taking valuable resources from a community and exporting it as a product in the form of high priced degrees at the cost of local people. There wouldn't be much difference between a coal mining extraction company town and Oberlin College. If you live in town, you know who you work for. It's. I don't know. Yeah, it's just like the veneer. And they've learned to weaponize all the talking points of being politically correct. The one vice president, she was very, very good at using just the right words on how to explain why in a liberal institution- - it's so progressive and loves everybody -- why they have two minimum wage temp agencies on campus. And not even trying to be able to hide [that] all the money goes to the top. How many deans makes six figures as a starting salary? But, you know, there's a utility cleaning company that makes minimum wage. All the lack of funding that the college has for different programs, the lack of opportunity, the lack of even just insight. If you want to know how a program is working or ways to improve it, you talk to the person who does that every day [about] how to make improvements or whatever. You don't need to create a study that has a commission with all these people with vested interests is that get free housing on campus. Like, a lot of the admins, they get free housing in addition to their salaries. But good luck finding affordable housing in Oberlin proper. The college is hiring in adjunct professors, which that's just a fancy word for you have a Ph.D. or a master's degree, but you're still a part time or you're a temp worker, sharecropper, whatever you want to say because you're not on tenure track. And they commute from Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, 45 minutes, an hour away because they can't find affordable housing in Oberlin proper. 

Jack — After what the college did to me, I don't think I'd ever work for them again. They left a totally bad taste in my mouth. I seen the way they treated people, why would I want to go through that again down the line? They took everything from me my savings, my livelihood, my ability to help my family, my ability to help my friends, the ability to help my community. They robbed me of that, without even giving me the opportunity to know it was coming. I could see if I was an employee that haphazardly came to work or was stealing. But I came to work every day and I worked. I did a job. I had great rapport with the students. I had wonderful rapport with the faculty. I went above and beyond because of my position at the gymnasium. We had people from outside the gym that would come in the public. They would come to the gym and work out, they had memberships to the gym, and I had rapport with them! I was a good employee. I gave the college everything I had every day, and they treated me like I was a piece of shit.

Jeff — I would blame Carmen Ambar, and I would blame Oberlin trustees and their adherence to neoliberal financial practices. Yeah, that would be it. It would be neo-liberalism engaged in by Carmen Ambar and the Oberlin trustees. [They're] more interested in making more money, this is a thing like, they told us at the time--which is like such a bullshit lie because the union actually got them to open their books and show--Oberlin College said, "we have financial problems, we can't afford this anymore" so the unions said, "show us the books." And to my great surprise they did show them the books, and I came to find out that, there was no problem. It was fine. I couldn't believe that they showed the books if they weren't going to have some sort of issue, but they were like, "nah man, this is entirely doable." And you know, it's true because, look around Oberlin campus right now, if they don't have any money, they are sure getting a hell of a lot of free construction work.