Maintenance Worker Shortage Affects University Campuses

The worker shortage has hit universities, with students living in campus apartments at the University of California Berkely struggling to have repairs done in a timely manner, The Daily Californian reports.

Some residents of the Channing-Bowditch Apartments on the UC Berkely campus report living with broken lights and plumbing problems for weeks. When students contact the emergency maintenance team, they are told the team is understaffed and there is no timeline available for when the work will be done.

University authorities say not only is the maintenance team understaffed, its stock of maintenance supplies is low. The pandemic has caused supply shortages nationwide, leading to delays in the shipping of needed materials to campus.

Throw in the fact that custodians have an increased workload as they need to clean and disinfect high-touch areas multiple times a day, and it’s no wonder students are having problems getting their service requests taken care of.

Campus spokeperson Adam Ratliff said the university is working to ramp up operations and staffing after reduced operations the last academic year. “We are committed to providing maintenance service for all of our residents in Cal Housing,” Ratliff said. “We are working to build up our Facilities staff so that we can more quickly respond to and address issues reported by residents.”