Demanding Action

On September 14, 2024, Martin “Marty” Lujan, a custodian at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU), passed away shortly after working inside a campus building that had been closed following odors from chemicals that were not properly stored—setting in motion investigations into health and safety hazards on the campus that put students, staff, and faculty at risk.

To learn more about this tragic incident and how unions can protect workers in similar situations, we spoke with leaders and members of the NMHU Faculty and Staff Association. Andrea Crespin, BBA, is the former president and treasurer of the NMHU Clerical and Facilities Staff Union. Kathy Jenkins, PhD, is a professor of exercise physiology and the president of the NMHU Faculty Association. Michael Remke, PhD, is an assistant professor of forestry and a member of the NMHU Faculty Association. (For information on protecting workers from a broader array of hazards, we also spoke with occupational medicine specialists. Read that Q&A here.)

–EDITORS

EDITORS: Tell us about your role at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) and in the union.

KATHY JENKINS: I’m a professor of exercise physiology, and I’m in my 29th year at NMHU. I came as a visiting professor and loved it so much that I just stayed. The university has a mission of open enrollment, and as one of the original Hispanic-serving institutions, NMHU has the values of diversity and access to education woven throughout the curriculum, so it’s exciting to work here.

I’m also president of the Faculty Association, one of the three bargaining units of the NMHU Faculty and Staff Association. I represent approximately 100 tenured and tenure-track faculty, and I’m the lead negotiator for our collective bargaining team.

ANDREA CRESPIN: I was born and raised in this community. I graduated from NMHU in 2002 with my bachelor’s in accounting and then came to work here. I currently work in the registrar’s office. I got involved with the union in 2015. I have served as treasurer and president of the Clerical and Facilities Staff Union, the bargaining unit representing clerical and facilities staff. But I was promoted recently, so I’m not currently eligible to be a member of the union.

MICHAEL REMKE: I’ve been an assistant professor of forestry here since August 2023. I was attracted to NMHU because it’s a teaching university where I could still engage in research, and this area is very affordable. I’m a member of the Faculty Association. This is my first unionized job. I had heard other people’s opinions about the union, but I wanted to find out what it was like for myself. I’ve found it’s a wonderful, supportive group of people who are really advocating for faculty and for employee wellness.

EDITORS: What led to investigations into health and safety hazards on campus?

KATHY: In July 2024, we started hearing complaints among the faculty that there was a foul smell in the Ivan Hilton Science and Technology Building, which houses a number of departments, including chemistry, biology, computer science, forestry, and natural resource management. We were told, “Oh, everything’s fine,” but people working in the building had a different experience.

MICHAEL: My office is on the first floor of the building, and the smell was like decaying flesh and chemical fumes. We learned that a walk-in cooler in the cold storage room had broken, and there were specimens that had gotten very warm as a result—and that there were unsorted and unlabeled chemicals being stored in that same room. We were told the issue was under control, but weeks later, the entire first floor again smelled strongly of death and chemicals. After a full day of class prep in my office, my eyes, throat, and lungs were burning. I had a headache, and my stomach was cramping.

When I called our Environmental Health and Safety Office and reported the smell, my symptoms, and that I was worried about improperly stored chemicals, I was directed to file a workers’ compensation claim through human resources. It took several days for human resources to process any paperwork. (My claim was eventually denied; because handling chemicals isn’t part of my job, the insurance company ruled that chemical exposure didn’t happen while carrying out my “normal” work duties.) Meanwhile, the first floor of the building still had chemical fumes, and other workers also started experiencing symptoms.

KATHY: The administration responded incorrectly for many weeks. At first, they just put up caution tape to keep people away from that part of the building. That, of course, didn’t help with the smells. Then, they tried to close one of the floors. But the smell went through the HVAC system to every other part of the building.

In August, another faculty member filed an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) complaint about the chemical fumes. She spoke with OSHA’s deputy director of hazardous waste, who ramped up a campus visit because of the previous complaints. At the same time, the university finally hired an abatement company, which came to campus on September 3, saw the cold room, and pulled the fire alarm. They refused to touch any of the chemicals because they were unlabeled and improperly stored. So the fire department came and closed the building immediately.

ANDREA: Unfortunately, although the building had been closed, we learned that the custodial staff was still required to work inside. We were also told that the custodial manager recommended custodians work in pairs so one could drag the other out if they passed out due to the fumes. Then Marty Lujan passed away on September 14, the day after he was assigned to clean the building.

After Marty passed, Kathy and I got a phone call that OSHA was on campus to do a walkthrough of the Ivan Hilton building as a starting point of its investigation into Marty’s death and the chemical exposure. During the walkthrough, although we were given N95 masks, there was still a very strong chemical smell when the lab was opened. After being in that building for less than an hour, my throat hurt and I had a sharp headache. So I can only imagine what employees who spent eight hours a day in the building went through.

EDITORS: How did the union organize to address the problem?

KATHY: The union really pushed this issue to the forefront. I don’t work in the building, so I didn’t know what was happening until after Michael became ill and filed his workers’ comp claim and the other professor filed the OSHA complaint. When I learned about the problems, I spoke with them and immediately notified NMHU’s president on behalf of the union. When we learned through another faculty member that Marty had passed, we again immediately contacted the president. The administration went into protection mode, but we were undeterred. We filed two grievances and went to the media about the issue.¹

NMHU’s president just joined our university in July 2024. Our Faculty Senate and Faculty and Staff Association worked together to bring about this leadership change by voting no confidence in the Board of Regents in May 2023.² The board was supporting a former president and provost who were ineffective and were hurting the institution. Our goal was to make the university a better place, and it took a public outcry for us to be heard. We got a new president and a new vice president of finance out of it—and we’re getting a new provost soon. So, we came to this problem with the Ivan Hilton building knowing how to collaborate to accomplish our goals—and knowing that we would have to do everything we could to both support and pressure our new president to take the appropriate actions.

ANDREA: Our national unions, the AFT and National Education Association (NEA), were very helpful in organizing for some of the immediate changes we needed and strategizing more actions long-term. They came to campus in October, and a strategic group met with faculty and staff who worked in the building and collected stories of what had happened. The AFT and NEA jointly held OSHA-10 trainings to certify as many people as wanted to participate. And in November, the union filed a request for a health hazard evaluation with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—that investigation is underway.

Our union’s strategic group meets once a week to see what more can be done to keep workers safe. We also continue to let the staff know that the union is here to help if they feel unsafe in their jobs.

MICHAEL: The union made us feel heard. They organized and facilitated interviews with OSHA so that faculty and staff had representation and met with me to make sure that I felt protected against retaliation for speaking up. They held a vigil for Marty after he passed and advocated for faculty to get replacement offices and help with rescheduling things while the Ivan Hilton building was closed. They put pressure on the president to host a forum in December for open dialogue about everyone’s collective experiences.

With more people contributing to the narrative, there was more recognition from the president that the administration needed to handle this. Things have moved really slowly, but in my opinion, the president has been stepping up and trying to do the best that he can. Unfortunately, he’s depending on people who will not take action or hold themselves accountable. The union is showing clear support for the faculty and staff and getting the president to care, which can mobilize people, but we still need more support. We need more upper-level leaders to help with some of these processes.

KATHY: Ivan Hilton reopened on January 10 at the start of the new semester, even though NMHU still had steps to take to demonstrate compliance with the fire department and ensure that the building is safe. Some of the chemicals were still in the building. The abatement company has since been able to remove most of them, but so much material has been collected over the years without being properly disposed of that only a few hazardous waste companies in the United States can handle the volume. We’re continuing to press the issue, and we’ll continue to file grievances as necessary to get this handled. We’re sending the administration the message that they need to be transparent and communicate, and they need to follow the law.

EDITORS: What factors do you believe contributed to this incident?

KATHY: People have known this building was a problem for years. When the Ivan Hilton building opened over 14 years ago, departments brought over almost everything from the storage of the old science building, even if they weren’t using it. Many of the chemicals that made the move were unlabeled and/or expired and should’ve been properly disposed of. Instead, they’ve been kept in rooms that were intended only for short-term storage. The university kept citing financial difficulties as the reason for not disposing of the materials, but according to the research policy handbook we negotiated, the university is supposed to allocate 42 percent of grant funds for administrative costs, including hazardous waste disposal. That money has not been earmarked correctly. We need the university to start using those funds for what they were intended—to further our educational mission and to keep everybody safe.

When people raise an issue and ask for change for so long but keep being told “No,” they become apathetic and finally give up, and I think that happened here. People stopped being so careful about storage and disposal because nothing was being done. When we walked the building with the OSHA investigators, we saw chemicals stored next to flammable materials and chemicals in unapproved containers and shoved onto shelves on top of each other as departments ran out of space because the university never disposed of these materials.

The investigation turned up other serious safety violations in the building and elsewhere on campus. In one building, human remains had not been stored properly. And the state police and New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau started to investigate the university’s poor record-keeping for chemicals. Our collective bargaining agreement says that the university must follow all state and federal health and safety standards, but it hadn’t filed hazardous waste reports in years. And our safety manual says that we’re supposed to have a safety officer who specifically works in this building to ensure everything is up to code, but there was none.

I think our systems infrastructure just eroded away over time, so we had no prevention or reporting mechanisms in place. It is the university’s responsibility to create that system of support and infrastructure, and we have been pushing to get that in place.

ANDREA: That infrastructure eroded due to lack of training and accountability. For instance, there was a person who was in charge of keeping track of all the chemicals, but he was never properly trained for the job. He reported issues with the chemicals being unlabeled and improperly stored several times, but nothing was ever done. He became so fed up that he quit.

MICHAEL: To add to that, I learned that 11 years ago, the campus had a chemical hygiene officer who was in charge of chemical safety, handling, procurement, inventory, and so forth for the whole campus. This person was a chemist with a PhD who set up campus safety plans that should have been followed, but when they left the position, the university chose not to replace them.

The former director of the Environmental Health and Safety Office crafted chemical handling plans based on the chemical hygiene officer’s work, but when that person left the university, the plans were forgotten. I found them on an archive of our website after arriving on campus and being shocked by the state of some of the labs. I immediately started correcting my lab based on the chemical handling plan, but the dean never disseminated the plan to department chairs so that other faculty could also make corrections to their labs. And importantly, the plans were never communicated or made accessible by the Environmental Health and Safety Office. Although they conduct inspections for fire code violations, they never once held anyone accountable for chemical handling or chemical hygiene violations, even though both were blatantly obvious in our facilities.

ANDREA: Another factor is that once people started experiencing issues because of the chemical storage and handling, they wouldn’t report it—many times out of fear of retaliation. People were experiencing things such as confusion, nausea, headaches, vomiting blood, respiratory and intestinal issues, and other concerning symptoms. A few were reporting but their supervisors were ignoring them, so they ignored the issues themselves. For those who came to see me, I’d tell them to go see a doctor, but there was no master list of chemicals being stored in the building, which a doctor would have needed to know what to look for in their bloodstream. The university took a long time to release the chemical list, which was unfortunate.

MICHAEL: Some of the custodial staff in the Ivan Hilton building were not part of the union until a lot of this happened. They would tell me they’d been assigned to clean up a spill or move chemicals, and I’d advise them not to do it unless they were given protective equipment. But there were a lot of concerns that they were going to be punished or terminated if they didn’t do their job. Fearing retaliation, they weren’t comfortable going to their supervisor, and they weren’t comfortable not doing what their supervisor had asked of them.

ANDREA: That fear is still there. When the building reopened, a custodian asked me if they had to go back to work because they were afraid to be in that building. Another told me that the nightmares they’d been having the last several months have only just stopped.

EDITORS: What do you want to share about Marty Lujan?

ANDREA: Marty was my friend. I met him when I was in high school, and my mom and I worked with him before we came to NMHU. He was very outgoing; he always had a smile on his face and was always willing to help. Every time I saw him, he would ask about my mom. He loved her so much.

The numbers of students and staff who came to Marty’s memorial showed what an impact he had on our campus. This whole incident has been heartbreaking. His coworkers, who were with him every day, have taken it very hard. When I heard about all of this, I asked myself why he continued to work in that building. But I know he was fearful of losing his job. It’s ironic, because he was the one always telling other people to go see their union rep for help, but he didn’t come to me when he was ordered to keep working in the building.

MICHAEL: I saw Marty every single day that I was on campus, and he was such an amazing person. He was the first-floor custodial staff in Ivan Hilton and probably one of the brightest lights in the building. Not only was he always here at work, but he was so loyal and enthusiastic about doing his job. He was always going out of his way to make sure we had everything we needed. He knew his job was important because keeping the facilities clean and functional is how we keep things running. So it’s been wonderful to see how many people care about Marty, but the circumstances are tragic.

KATHY: It’s unfortunate when somebody passes away that you find out so much about them. I didn’t work in the building, so I only saw Marty a few times. But it’s been amazing to hear stories about what a wonderful, kind, and funny man he was. To hear the number of people he spoke to every single day. The outpouring of love for him has been tremendous.

EDITORS: What are you advocating for to continue protecting workers?

ANDREA: We have seen some important changes made. For instance, the university hired a new environmental health and safety officer, and that officer and their staff have been given training. We also have staff members in the Ivan Hilton building who are in charge of chemical stockrooms and who will be creating a centralized database for material safety data sheets, hazardous waste tracking, and chemical tracking. And in September 2024, 30 members of our facility staff were certified in OSHA-30 training because they were out of compliance.

Now we are pushing for continued work safety training for staff, because that’s an area that has been neglected. I know of one custodian who worked here for eight months and didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to touch certain chemicals because she was never properly trained. And one thing the OSHA officials noted right away was that the chemicals our custodians use to clean were not properly labeled. So our staff needs training, and the university needs to communicate training opportunities properly. When the hazardous waste management training and the OSHA-10 training were scheduled, the staff received notification just one day prior, yet the custodial staff was told it was mandatory to attend.

MICHAEL: Importantly, those trainings need to have paper trails for accountability. With much of what we’ve been advocating for, the administration has tried to hand it off to us to implement, but the faculty union is going to keep pushing for administration-based roles to track and implement trainings, disseminate information, enforce rules and policies, and create systems of accountability. Right now it’s both-and—we are fighting for the administration to fulfill its obligations, and the union also continues to facilitate the trainings the law requires to keep workers safe.

We will also be pushing for the university to release the full chemical manifest list of all the 4,000-plus chemicals that were removed from the building as well as the results of the comprehensive air quality testing they recently conducted to determine the building was clear to reopen. And as Kathy said, there are still tasks the university needs to complete to keep the building open and operating safely.

From there, it’s going to be up to faculty to handle things properly in their labs and up to custodial managers to make sure that custodians have the proper protective equipment for mixing and handling their cleaning chemicals. We now have a chemical safety committee that helped develop new chemical handling protocols, and we have very strict chemical handling requirements and policies from the New Mexico Environment Department to ensure regulatory compliance. I feel much safer in the building now that we have working emergency showers and eye-wash stations, a weekly inspection plan for emergency equipment, and a new chemical hygiene officer to oversee chemical handling. We’re working with him to address ongoing issues with mishandling and with legacy waste that may have been missed in the cleanup. Plus, because of the volume of hazardous waste involved, we’re required to have relevant staff receive hazardous waste training from the Environmental Protection Agency; it’s mandated that those staff have spending authority for emergencies with no preapproval requirements.

So now we have established channels to prevent students, staff, or faculty from becoming ill—or worse. I hope that we can create a culture of safety on campus where people learn that “If you see something, say something.” But I genuinely trust that the vast majority of faculty and staff are here trying to do their jobs with care, and I am stoked to be able to teach some lab techniques again and trust that my students and I are in a safe environment.

KATHY: The university is stepping up, so we are seeing good things come out of this effort to revamp our safety and hazardous waste practices. When we uncovered safety issues with other buildings and the union notified the president, he acted immediately to ensure people had the resources to put safety practices in place. We want to continue to see health and safety conditions improve throughout the campus.

We want to be a partner with the university in helping create a good, safe infrastructure, and we want NMHU to be known as one of the safest places in the world. According to the environmental safety report from the New Mexico Environment Department, the campus had 16 critical violations.³ We need to do our part to start following the rules, but at the same time we don’t want to let the administration off the hook. As Michael said, without accountability, we can’t move forward. So that’s a part of our grievance.

We want to get more of our faculty and staff involved in this work, but we’re also fighting some anti-union sentiment on campus and tactics intended to whittle down our bargaining units and prevent staff from being represented. We should have about 400 members in our units, but we have just 250. So we need to get all those positions back in to help push our agenda forward.

And we need to help our faculty and staff who are experiencing acute and chronic effects of the chemical exposure. We want to bring occupational medicine practitioners—who are rare in New Mexico—to campus so that faculty and staff can get answers and the medical treatment that they need. Access to these clinicians, along with access to the chemical manifest list, could give people more direction and insight into what’s happening to them, and it could help them better protect themselves and their families.

EDITORS: What do you wish you had known? What would you tell others facing similar situations?

MICHAEL: My biggest regret is that we did not successfully mobilize the university to get people tested immediately after chemical exposure. Now it’s too late; most of the chemicals are out of the building and have been metabolized in people’s bodies, so there’s no way to test all that we were exposed to. I wish I’d had a better understanding of what state- and national-level union resources were available to help us push for testing.

I also wish that our union had formed a subcommittee specifically to figure out all the needs, including staff representation, across all units. I think sometimes our units get a little siloed, and we could get much more work done quickly by working together. We did a lot of things well, such as getting details to the public about the situation when the university was not being transparent. Unions are such a powerful tool—especially when they are well versed in things like whistleblower protection laws. When we were all scared, the union made us feel safer. I don’t think I would’ve gone to the press if I didn’t have union support.

ANDREA: We’ve tried very hard to let our clerical and facility staff know that the union is here to help. That is our main goal. We want to make sure that they feel safe in their work environment. And that’s what I’d want to tell anyone else in this type of situation. Join the union, join a bargaining unit, and let your voice be heard.

KATHY: I think the biggest lesson I learned through this is to use small things to build union power. If you engage members and create a ruckus on the small issues, you create power to make long-term change, and you’ll have more power in the future. For us, one of those small things was going to the press. The president didn’t want that to happen. But why wouldn’t we? The situation was atrocious. A member of our NMHU family died. We’re never going to let them forget.

As union members, we are always fighting for justice. Being a part of bringing justice to this campus has been one of the most uplifting accomplishments of my life. And with the AFT’s support, people are feeling more power and starting to shake off the apathy of the past. We’re seeing that together we can make change, and that is energizing.

Endnotes

1. V. Maciel, “Chemical Concerns Heighten Following Death of NMHU Custodian,” Las Vegas Optic, September 25, 2024, lasvegasoptic.com/news/community/chemical-concerns-heighten-following-death-of-nmhu-custodian/article_82fbd07c-7910-11ef-bab0-4ff113554a71.html.

2. V. Maciel, “NMHU Faculty Senate Issues ‘Vote of No Confidence’ in Board of Regents,” Las Vegas Optic, May 11, 2023, lasvegasoptic.com/news/community/nmhu-faculty-senate-issues-vote-of-no-confidence-in-board-of-regents/article_f8d68534-f01e-11ed-bd34-7f3a8fae2e62.html.

3. To read the full report, visit nmhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/1.-Inspection-Related-2024-09-11-0844-1.pdf.

[Illustrations by Gabriella Trujillo]