Student workers do the labor that allows our university to operate, working on the frontlines of the pandemic and the student body. They staff the dining and residence halls, the information desks, they clean campus and give tours to prospective students. From janitors to ambassadors, student workers operate at all levels of the University of Oregon. To call them essential is almost a misnomer; student workers are integral to the continued existence of the UO as a functioning institution.
Yet how is it that the workers that occupy all sorts of occupations on campus are systematically abused through low wages, understaffing and hostile management? It is unclear if UO is apathetic or malevolent, but it is a distinction without a difference, for the university has the ability and resources to provide livable working conditions. As such, the only explanation is that UO wants its workers to fail.
Despite all these students being employed by the same institution, their labor and experiences often remain separate. Before this term we only heard rumors, but a new campaign by the group UO Student Workers has begun to coalesce workers’ grievances. Beginning as an offshoot from campus’ Young Democratic Socialists of America late last November, UO Student Workers polls students on their experiences working for the university with an online survey.
I spoke to David Purucker, a graduate student and organizer of UO Student Workers, about the role of the group.
“It is a working class organization, interested in advocating for the interests of student workers,” Purucker said. “We’re interested in winning reforms to ameliorate the conditions facing student workers.”
By hearing from the community first hand, the group aims to leverage changes through UO by showing its working body the shared issues that linger in the workplace. Moreover, they hope to propose a bill of rights for student workers through ASUO, including a living wage, fair scheduling and basic labor protections.
“UO does not offer a living wage to those who are crucial to the functioning of this university,” Purucker said. “Student workers are left hungry, even when they’re surrounded by food.”
As of Jan. 6, UO Student Workers has received 100 survey responses from all kinds of student workers answering questions about their satisfaction with wages, hours and pandemic protection. The group has begun posting testimonials on their Instagram, and I was allowed access to the responses for the purposes of this story. Folks, it’s much worse than we thought.
Respondents describe horrible treatment by management, unsafe working conditions and lack of training. The most common grievance was pay, with 61.2% of responses giving either a one or a two on a scale of five for satisfaction with compensation. Frustration was commonly expressed given that workers toil long shifts on top of a class schedule to make rent and put up with uncompassionate customers.
I sat down with Sibley, a former student dining worker in Carson and Global Scholars Hall who requested to only use her first name. Her experiences were a microcosm of the issues faced by the entire student working body.
“We are definitely abused by this university,” Sibley said. “They have all this money to take care of us, but they just decide we don’t matter.”
In her survey response she recalled feeling like an “expendable pawn,” regularly working five hour and 50 minute shifts as to not be given the break at six hours. It is honestly surprising UO still has a workforce despite bleeding laborers dry and the prevalence of jobs with better pay and conditions off campus.
“There are so many jobs, just leave,” Sibley said. “I wasted two years.”
These are not problems that can be fixed by quick changes in university policy or campus-wide emails, but only through bottom-up restructuring of UO’s working classes. We as a student body should feel radicalized upon hearing these experiences — not powerless — as another result from the survey found overwhelming support for potential worker organizing on campus, with 49.5% saying “yes” and 36.1% saying “maybe.”
The economic woes faced by student workers are a common struggle, and by lifting up the most exploited workers, we could leverage the conditions for all workers on campus. If you want proof that a united student coalition could bring change, it only took the UO’s graduate employee union one day of rallying outside Johnson Hall to make UO provide masks to all.
To UO students: Learn the names of those next to you, encourage those working to share their experiences and exercise solidarity with workers. As individuals, students can only beg on the whims of UO’s institutional power, but as a collective, we can demand.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Members of UO Student Workers gather on the steps of Johnson Hall. UO Student Workers is a student organization “interested in advocating for the interest of student workers,” says David Purucker, an organizer of the group. (Molly McPherson/Emerald)