Major staffing change made to the Student Centre

Raymond Kwan
Senior Staff
A major staffing change in the York University Student Centre (YUSC) occurred Nov. 9, when the centre’s in-house janitorial staff found out their jobs would be contracted out to Omni Facility Services, a cleaning services firm.
“[The employees] were given the opportunity to stay on and continue employment at the Student Centre with Omni and everyone to date has accepted,” said Omni Human Resources Manager Pauline Chanderpaul.
Scott Jarvis, YUSC executive director, said the YUSC board of directors made a decision to contract out its janitorial staff in an effort to provide more job flexibility and benefits for their employees.
“The reason behind it is because we don’t have a human resources department here at the Student Centre, so [with Omni] we’re able to provide job flexibility for our staff,” said Jarvis.
“Omni has a larger pool of staffing, and if someone does get sick, they can replace that person, so there’s no loss of hours,” he added.
According to Jarvis, the new contract comes with a benefits package that includes life insurance and unionization, so that all affected employees are now represented by the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 183.
Neither Jarvis nor Chanderpaul wanted to comment on whether the new contract included lower wages for employees. Jarvis stated that, to his knowledge, the employees seem to be responding well to the contract and does not know of anyone who left the Student Centre as a result.
The Student Centre used to employ private cleaning services Century, a company similar to Omni, over 10 years ago. In 1999, janitorial services were moved in-house because of disputes and complications between the Student Centre and Century, according to Century claim documents.