Texas AM University System Chancellor John Sharp, for the first time since implementing the largest outsourcing at a public university and announcing an administrative review that will analyze the worth of all non-faculty employees, went before the staff to answer questions and hear their concerns.
The hour-and-a-half-long session on Tuesday morning at Rudder Theatre, organized by the AM university staff council, pitted Sharp against a room full of 270 staff members, many of whom are worried that their jobs are in jeopardy. The dialogue was also streamed online, where it garnered 370 hits.
There were 19 prescreened questions and 11 asked live. Sharp gave a brief update on previous outsourcing, took questions from staff members and slightly eclipsed the budgeted time for the dialogue.
Sharp, a longtime politician, got the crowd laughing on several occasions. However, the biggest responses followed pointed questions about low staff morale and the fear of the looming administrative audit.
The system, under the leadership of Sharp, has several audits underway, the largest of which is an administrative audit due in December that will assess the job of every staff member in the system and could result in job cuts. Last year, landscape management, custodial services, building maintenance and dining services were outsourced to Compass Group USA — a move that university officials said will save or generate hundreds of millions of dollars.
A few of the employees asked Sharp point-blank about the ongoing audits, the future of their jobs and their perceived worth to the system. When Sharp stuck to his talking point about how the outsourcing has freed up funds to help students and faculty, an employee cut him off to say she was asking about staff.
The crowd erupted in applause.
Sharp indicated that he was surprised to hear that the morale of the staff was low and that he was not aware of the staff concerns about the administrative audit. Sharp said he can’t fix what he doesn’t know about. Staff members acknowledged that they don’t go to Sharp with concerns because they fear they could lose their jobs if they speak up.
“If you have a problem with something, you ought to not hesitate to send me an email and say, ‘I think this is a bunch of bull and we need to look over here at this, that and the other,'” Sharp said. “I know [my email is] real easy to get a hold of, obviously, because I get a lot of them. … The best ideas always come from the people doing the work and if those people are silent and don’t get their ideas in the public forum, then that’s where the problem occurs.”
The administrative audit is not about outsourcing, he said. Sharp justified the reviews by saying AM is responsible to the Legislature and taxpayers.
“It is not our university,” Sharp said. “As much as we love it, it ain’t ours. It belongs to the people of the state of Texas. The people of the state of Texas see absolutely nothing wrong with us looking at ourselves and seeing if our administrative costs are too high, just right or too low, and we’re going to do that. We’re going to do that with the same respect we did for outsourcing and we’re going to see where the chips fall.”
Furthermore, Sharp indicated that state legislators want to see AM spending its funds wisely and that the audits could help secure future funding.
“For us to sit here and say, ‘That ain’t nobody else’s business, it’s our business,’ we don’t live in that world,” Sharp said. “We have legislators and people who want us to be totally accountable with every sales tax dollar that they spend or that they could be spending on food for kids or something else.”
The dialogue started with Sharp speaking about last year’s outsourcing to Compass Group USA, which he said has gone well. However, the employees that were outsourced and now work for the company were not in attendance. An audience member at one point asked the outsourced employees to rise and no one stood up. Another shouted that the outsourced employees weren’t given time off to attend the update about their outsourcing.
Staff Council President Lisa Blum, following the meeting, said Compass Group USA decides which of their employees can attend. A call to a company spokesperson was not returned.
The chancellor and staff had different takes on the quality of services provided by the non-privatized employees.
“We wouldn’t outsource if we thought we were sacrificing quality,” Sharp said. “It remains imperative to provide clean, safe facilities that meet the needs of our students and faculty and staff.”
He cited emails and verbal feedback from alumni who said they had noticed an improvement in landscaping and building maintenance at AM post-outsourcing.
Staff disagreed and gave several examples of unsightly parts of campus, the recent closure of dining facilities by the county health department, and long wait times on maintenance orders.
Other questions pertained to the perceived value of the staff. Several told the chancellor that they don’t see themselves as dollar values and that they consider themselves part of the Aggie family.
Sharp said he does value the staff, and that he considers them to be the best in the state.
“Decisions like outsourcing are not easy. We knew a lot of employees are affected,” Sharp said. “Simply because we operate in a different way has nothing to do, at least in my opinion, with the pride that any of us have in this university.”
