About 25 custodians, mostly or all Latino, were fired or resigned as a result of the screening, Nagy says.
The review of Social Security numbers was initiated after several employees had mail returned as undeliverable. The review, initially of one employee, was expanded after that custodian's Social Security number came back as invalid.
The university's review and dismissal of the workers has sparked an outcry
from Latino and union officials.
"As I understand it, that's illegal, to pick on one group of people,"
said Mark Thomas, president of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees Local 171.
The custodians were notified by letter in March that they had 30 days to present documentation authorizing them to work in the United States. When they did not comply, they were fired on Tuesday. Local 171 officials criticized the move as racial profiling, or singling out a group of employees.
"I don't want to use the word racial profiling," Nagy said Friday. "I think in the effort to verify where there were concerns, one of the things they were looking at appears be the basis of names." When asked to clarify, he said that basis was whether the names sounded Latino.
Although there are no disciplinary consequences planned for the unidentified UW-Madison staff members, there will be an effort to educate university officials about what to do when questions are raised about work eligibility, Nagy said.
"The people involved have very good work records," he said.
A small task force will be created to develop an approach to deal with issues of a similar nature, Nagy said.
"The approach taken was one we would have preferred to be thought through more thoroughly," he said. "But what they were trying to do was to take ownership of a problem that came to their attention and get some sense of the dimension. The method was not the most desirable. The initiative was not necessarily bad."
In describing the series of events that led to the custodians' dismissal, Nagy explained that workers in the Physical Plant office found a returned check for one custodian who was owed a refund because too much had been withheld for union dues. University officials found that the address given by the custodian was non-existent.
As UW-Madison payroll officials checked that employee's Social Security number, a pile of similar custodian refund checks were returned. Five of that group ultimately were determined to have invalid Social Security numbers.
Nagy said that was when there was "a ground-level concern about 'do we have a problem here?' They simply took a grouping of people from this shift, from this unit, and checked their Social Security numbers."
Of the 26 people who were chosen for the check, 25 were found to have illegitimate work authorizations, Nagy said. In early March, the university notified the workers there was a problem. Some quit in the meantime, and late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, the termination notices went out to the rest.
Contrary to Nagy's previous statements, he said Friday there were no employees who were using the same Social Security numbers.
Nagy's comments on Friday came after he told WORT radio Thursday that "individuals tried to experimentally, without guidance, find out how big this problem was" and ran a "random check on a number of people, and all of them came back with illegitimate Social Security numbers." He did not specify on Thursday what the basis of the random check was.
Meanwhile, community members are trying to reach out to the families of the fired custodians, but activists are still struggling to find them because the university has not released their home phone numbers and addresses.
On Thursday, the UW System said it was considering running all of its 20,000-plus employees through a Social Security Administration check. But that has only angered the union; Randy Brink of the union said the move could cause more low-income workers to lose their jobs.
The union has been able to reach a handful of the fired workers through third parties, Brink said. "They're laying low right now for obvious reasons."
Aliens working in the United States without proper documentation face deportation through the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The union filed an open records request with the university more than a week ago asking for the workers' home phone numbers, but they have not received the information, Brink said.
As the union and the university bickered, others sounded concern about the welfare of the fired custodians. "It's ironic some of the most committed and hard-working individuals are being singled out because of not enough documentation," said Madison School Board member Juan Jose Lopez. "I know there are people the university has hired who they haven't looked into as much as they have with the Hispanic people who are working there."
There is a large demand in the area for service industry workers, Lopez said. "It'll be a tough transition," he said, but "they'll probably find something fairly quickly."