I don't work in Ann Arbor so please allow me to talk out of my ass, based on the contract as posted on the site and some previous posts:
Yes, it's true. To ensure more labor hours for the staff they don't allow management to contract this type of work out.

On a personal note, what's wrong with cleaning toilets? I clean them at home, I've cleaned them on the job, and I've certainly cleaned them at Borders (and yes, we have a cleaning crew; that doesn't prevent people from getting nasty during working hours and somone has to take care of those messes). Would it kill you to pick up a mop? A broom? A dustcloth? Are we, as mighty booksellers, too proud to clean our own stores? Too good? Too educated? Too what?

We still have the same arrangement as we had before the vote, the strike and the contract. For years we have had one person who has a unique job description. He performs specific cleaning tasks for 4 hours each day and works as a bookseller the remaining four. In addition an outside professional cleaning company cleans each morning for 2-3 hours.

So no we don't currently "clean our own toilets" or routinely perform any cleaning tasks as part of our seller/ipt/supervisor jobs. When there's an accident most of us can and do respond as needed.

BTW- before moving to our current location, which is almost 4 times larger than the original location, we did all of our own cleaning and changed all our lights. Tasks rotated weekly and eventually everyone did it all including the bathrooms and washing the windows. The store was crammed full of books and customers yet still clean & always well lit...but then those were also the days when alphabetizing, flushing, re-stocking and well organized sections were a primary expectation.

It wasn't perfect by any means. We complained about having to clean and having to carry our books in our arms up two flights of stairs(no elevator, escalator or v-carts of any kind) and having to hoist return boxes up a flight of stairs because the receiving/sort area was in the basement. But we were proud of what we did and who we were because of our efforts.

Sorry, I drifted from now to then but there's something about this cleaning thing which triggers those flashbacks.
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They're quicker to lie to employees than they ever are to speaK any kind of truth on these issues. If you want to stop them, then speak immediately right up, right out in public just as the drivel finnishes exiting their mouths. And if they insist on doing it behind closed doors, one on one, then walk right out to the backroom and sales floor and talk right up about it with your fellow employees. ( Frankly, I no longer even wince at speaking very plainly to customers about the changes and exploitation that has become such a hallmark and money maker for the Corp. management. And as you know, plenty of our customers know exactly what we're talking about and think about it just as highly as we do. "Business" practices which if one actually looks into it and thinks about it are highly UN-American.) Don't go about cowering to a pack of liers, and there's nothing to be afraid of over showing the falseness to their often inane statements and rationalities. You really want to see them look smaller in the work place, then say out loud what probably everybody else around knows and is itching to say. Minimumly, they will at least quit doing it and degrading you by expecting you to sit there and shake your head "yes" to such blatant, often offensive to one's intelligence lies. Our false fears, that is their best ally, period! As for healthy debate towards work place policies and compensations, this is our business and work environment, too; our right and responibility to do it for ourselves.

What I love is how they want it both ways. They want to say that we didn't get any changes or improvements, but at the same time we 'forced' the whole company to do something like change fulltime to 32 hours.

One thing that we DO like to think we helped influence was the survey. If anything good comes out of that (like benefits for part-timers), I'd like to think we helped influence the company to obey their own open door policy a little bit and pay attention to what their poverty-stricken employees need.

Of course, it also helped them lie with statistics. They asked us to prioritize our benefits, and then announced they were doing away with stock options because we don't value them. This is not really true- I'd say that we value ALL of our benefits. The chipping away at our compensation packages is exactly WHY we unionized, not because we were desperate to clean our own toilets.

I'm so glad that the average Borders worker thinks and reads.