University of Oregon student workers gathered in the Erb Memorial Union Amphitheater for a union campaign kickoff on Oct. 20.
Student workers who attended the event were encouraged to fill out a union card if they were interested in organizing. The organizers will need at least 30% of the student worker population to sign a petition or union card in order for the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. The Division of Student Life employs more than 1,500 students, according to its website, from jobs in the Student Recreation Center, to food service, to resident assistants and more.
The organizers said if students vote for a union they would prioritize bargaining for living wages, properly train new hires, a two-week pay period, worker control of scheduling and guaranteed paid time off in the event of a COVID-caused school shutdown.
Alex Goodwin works at the PNW Public Market and has worked in food service at UO for more than four and a half years. Goodwin said he’d experienced unionization suppression in his workplace throughout his UO food service career.
“There were signup sheets for people to fill out if they were interested in unionizing that were put up in my break room at PNW,” Goodwin said. “Each of the four times they were put up they were taken down by management.”
When asked by organizers of the unionization movement if he’d like to help out, Goodwin said he was more than willing to volunteer.
During his speech, Goodwin said this wasn’t the first time UO student workers had organized for better pay. Goodwin referenced Daily Emerald reporting done in 1969, in which EMU student workers organized to negotiate a wage increase from $1.30 an hour to $1.60, the federal minimum wage at the time.
“That’s nothing now, but back then it wasn’t enough either,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin said he talked with his coworkers and friends about starting a union long before the current movement began, and said he feels energized to finally be acting on their ideas.
The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, UO’s graduate employee union, has been one of the movement’s largest supporters, Goodwin said.
Emily Beatty, GTFF’s vice president of external relations, said the efforts the student workers are putting into unionizing aren’t just valuable for negotiating better working conditions, but also for networking for better career opportunities in their futures.
“I remember being a student worker when I was an undergraduate,” Beatty said during her speech at the event. “If we had thought we had the capacity to organize and understand how our problems related as a broader community I think we could have done a lot more to achieve better working conditions.”
Will Garrahan, a core organizer of the UO Student Workers campaign, said the UOSW is collecting signatures at the beginning of the academic year while student workers are most engaged. At the beginning of the academic year, dining hall workplaces and residence halls can be hectic to work at, Garrahan said. Plus, the extended pay period makes it difficult for student workers to pay their bills.
“In dining, we have a four week pay period, and then it’s a two week delay, so you don’t get your first paycheck for six weeks,” Garrahan said.
The UOSW union would be like an industrial union, Garrahan said, where workers in different jobs throughout a company are all a part of the same union.
“We don’t want dining to be one union and academic workers to be one union; we want it to be one big union,” Garrahan said. “Because together, we have one basic employer: the university.”
Last spring, the UOSW started distributing flyers asking student workers whether they felt their pay was adequate, if they had experienced workplace harassment and if they might be interested in organizing. Garrahan said the UOSW received just over 150 responses, with the most common grievances being about workplace COVID-19 policy and protections for workers, pay rate and period, and workplace harassment.
