Airport officials change decision, award janitorial contract to incumbent
The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority held a special meeting on Wednesday to ensure that its janitorial employees are paid fairly and that Hollywood Burbank Airport has the best services.
Authority members voted unanimously to cancel the airport’s conditional janitorial-services contract and office-lease agreement with a new company, United Maintenance Co. Inc. and instead awarded the contract and agreement to Diverse Facility Solutions Inc., known as DFS — the company that had held the contract previously.
Airport officials had awarded a contract to United Maintenance in July.
The new three-year contract will be at a fixed total price of roughly $4.645 million, with two one-year options at approximately $1.686 million and $1.733 million, respectively.
Anthony DeFrenza, director of engineering and maintenance for Hollywood Burbank, said authority members conditionally awarded United Maintenance the contract on July 15 on the basis that the company could finalize a collective-bargaining agreement with SEIU-USWW, the union that represents the janitorial employees at the airfield.
Based on the airport’s selection criteria, United Maintenance was ranked the highest out of four finalists, while DFS, which has been the janitorial firm at Hollywood Burbank for the past five years, was just a few points behind.
DeFrenza said the authority has a policy to award the contract to the highest-ranking firm.
However, with the Sept. 1 deadline looming, DeFrenza said airport officials received a joint letter from United Maintenance and union representatives on Aug. 25 stating that the collective bargaining-agreement would not be signed unless the contract was modified to provide an additional $378.11 per employee per month this year, with a projected 6% annual increase for the life of the agreement.
SEIU-USWW representative Ada Camacho said the increase was necessary to ensure that employees could continue paying for their health insurance.
She added that the group did not have a preference about which company was selected as the airport’s janitorial firm, stating that relationships between the union and both DFS and United Maintenance have been positive.
The initial bid from United Maintenance was for roughly $4.248 million for the first three years, with the two optional years being about $1.499 million and $1.530 million, respectively.
DeFrenza said United Maintenance submitted a modified bid on Aug. 26 to account for the union’s request and increased the amount for the first three years of the contract to about $4.670 million. The total for the optional years also went up to roughly $1.656 and $1.697 million, respectively.
That was a jump of $745,577 over the original proposal from United Maintenance.
Based on the updated proposal, DeFrenza said staff recalculated the rankings and DFS came in as the firm with the best proposal based on the airport’s criteria.
“We have always signed on with the agreement with the union — all current benefits that have been enjoyed by the employees for the last five years,” said Allen Dishman, senior director of operations for DFS. “We are committed to that.”
