Union workers at the Department of Children, Youth and Families’ (DCYF) central office in Providence have recently implored the state not to renew the agency’s lease of the building, citing health and safety concerns about the working conditions there.
Now, a few unwelcome visitors at the Friendship Street offices have temporarily forced the agency out of the building: A bat was found on the premises Sunday evening, according to an email DCYF Director Ashley Deckert sent to agency staff on Monday morning.
“We are taking this situation seriously and, out of an abundance of caution, will be moving to a fully remote work arrangement until further notice,” Deckert wrote in her message, which was obtained by Rhode Island Current.
The email, sent at 8:32 a.m., noted that the building would close at 10 a.m. Deckert advised staff to grab any “essential items” for remote work before that time.
Shortly after noon Monday, DCYF spokesperson Barb Francella confirmed via email that the building was closed as of 10 a.m. Francella also confirmed that Sunday’s bat sighting follows another bat sighting on Thursday, Aug. 14. Pest control removed that bat the same day, and Francella said pest control is now working to remove the second bat.
“Our pest control provider was called in to remove the bat this morning, inspect the building and determine the point of entry,” Francella wrote. “We are working closely with the landlord, property manager and pest control provider to address the issue and comply with all necessary standards.”
But the exodus from the Friendship Street office is not a total surprise to the DCYF workers unionized with SEIU Local 580, which comprises about 300 of the 460 workers in the building. Matthew Gunnip, the union’s president, shared a number of emails with Rhode Island Current which traced a clearer timeline for the bat saga.
Union members were notified in an email blast the morning of Aug. 14, with a short message that read, “There is an animal bat on the second floor. It has not been located.”
A few hours later, DCYF Chief of Staff Misty Delgado wrote in an internal email to all staff that a “small bat” had been removed from the building’s second floor, and that staff in the area had been temporarily relocated. Pest control was on the scene within 30 minutes, Delgado wrote, and the bat was “safely removed” from the building and sent off to the state health department, where it would be tested for rabies.
A copy of the rabies test results was not available from DCYF as of Monday afternoon.
Gunnip’s emails culminated in a Sunday evening request to DCYF leadership that the Providence office be shuttered Monday.
“What assurances does DCYF have that there are no additional bats in the building, and what corrective actions have been taken to ensure that the intervention on Thursday actually remedied the issue? How are workers to trust that this time there truly are no more bats in the building?” Gunnip wrote in the email, which was addressed to DCYF leadership as well as state health and administrative officials.
Richard Charest — who leads the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which oversees a large roster of state agencies including DCYF — wrote to Gunnip Monday morning that he had spoken with Deckert and that employees would be allowed to work from home as the building is evaluated further.
Bats signal deeper problems, union claims
In his Sunday email, Gunnip cited several health concerns regarding the bats, from the risk of rabies to the potential spread of histoplasmosis, a respiratory illness that can be acquired from bat excrement, also known as guano. That is especially a concern, Gunnip wrote, as the Friendship Street office building uses recirculated air in its HVAC system — one of the factors identified as a culprit in what workers call the building’s poor air quality, and a major reason why the workforce wants to discontinue the current lease, which expires at the end of November.
The State Properties Committee needed to approve the lease extension by the end of July, and was set to weigh in upon the proposed 10-year renewal at a July 22 meeting. Union pushback caused the committee to delay a vote until air-quality reports were completed and reviewed.
At a subsequent meeting on July 29, the committee delayed the vote again, and said it wants to schedule a public hearing on the lease renewal, but a meeting had not been scheduled as of Monday.
Gunnip said in a phone call Monday afternoon that union leadership never received copies of the air quality report from DCYF directly, but instead saw the report for the first time when it was uploaded with a story published on Rhode Island Current.
DCYF leadership has previously said the Friendship Street building is safe, and characterized the union’s presence at the July 29 State Properties meeting — in which workers brought large photographs documenting building issues like mold and rodents — as “theatrics.”
But the issues are not unique to DCYF, Gunnip said, noting he had spent his day starting the grievance process on behalf of a worker at the Department of Human Services building in Warwick, who is concerned that his recent headaches may be due to the building’s working conditions.
Emails from the agency’s chief of staff said that the landlord performed testing recently and there was no mold present. But the building has had mold problems in the past, according to a Feb. 2024 analysis.
SEIU Local 580 represents numerous social service agencies in Rhode Island’s public sector, many of them within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, including the Department of Human Services. Gunnip said issues with aging buildings often leased by the state are only widening the rift between management and workers.
Gunnip said of the Warwick human services worker, “He’s thinking, ‘Am I just going crazy, or is it really the building?’ That’s the problem in and of itself. If it wasn’t a substandard building…then you know, that’d be a different story.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
