Every morning at 5 a.m., Physical Plant Management workers can be seen working diligently to maintain CSUN’s grounds. Both men and women dump out trashcans, clean windows, mow lawns, and sweep and mop classroom floors, among other various tasks. If any student, faculty or staff member arrives on campus this early, he or she will see several PPM workers actively performing various tasks to prepare CSUN for a school day of large crowds of people.
All PPM workers exert great effort to make CSUN appear amazing to students, faculty and staff. Most of these workers perform all of these arduous duties with friendly smiles and good attitudes.
PPM workers and the daily tasks they complete allow CSUN to radiate as a great place to attend classes. Much of this work, however, goes unnoticed by students.
As any student walks around campus after the PPM workers have completed most of their morning duties and the campus is full of students, he or she will see that the most commonly used areas on campus, such as the bathrooms, are increasingly mistreated by our carelessness for the campus.
As each school day passes, the once-immaculate bathrooms around academic buildings are tarnished by the crowds of men and women who enter it all day. With mops, soap and towels in hand, PPM workers enter these bathrooms several times a day to preserve cleanliness, however, within an hour the bathrooms will re-emerge disastrous.
Around 10 p.m., after most classes have wrapped up, CSUN’s grounds are often tattered by students, who dump their trash outside of the designated bins at many areas on campus. Throughout the school day, many students will leave empty soda bottles and meal boxes on their classroom floors and desks. Soon after classes have completed, PPM workers can be seen picking up papers and empty food boxes from classrooms and freshly cut lawns, or digging out food wrappers from rosebushes.
Some will say that most of these tasks are part of a PPM worker’s job. There is a point and time, however, when we must take into consideration the amount of work PPM workers have to complete on a daily basis.
These small tasks, such as picking up one’s trash from the ground or towels on the bathroom floors, add up to unnecessary work for PPM workers. We must bring out our CSUN pride, and pick up after ourselves. These tasks could be easily completed by any CSUN student, faculty and staff member.
Unfortunately, the hard work PPM workers perform daily for CSUN has not been praised by CSUN administrators, especially when it comes in the form of static wages. Part-time PPM staff members have said their wages have not increased in quite some time.
As the price of living increases in California, feeding a family, paying for bills and education is hard, so one can imagine that maintaining a family and household is especially difficult on a PPM worker’s unchanged salary.
When will CSUN increase the salaries of PPM workers? Why have their wages gone unchanged? With PPM workers and their efforts visible throughout the campus each school day, an increase of their wages is long overdue. The CSUN community must push for an increase in PPM workers’ wages.
From now until the end of this semester, every student, faculty and staff member should try to get acquainted with at least one PPM worker every day. If anyone attempts to greet a PPM worker, he or she will discover that a new friendship will emerge. Most people will learn that PPM workers have interesting stories to tell about their lives and the campus, and have similar struggles and goals.
Like students, faculty and staff, PPM workers also live and breathe CSUN.
Veronica Rocha can be reached at veronica.rocha@csun.edu.
