Opinion: The union has moved to a new certification strategy after getting mired in bureaucracy.
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On Labor Day, University of Oregon Student Workers made the announcement on their social media that they will now be holding an election to certify official union status. The vote will be held Oct. 5 to 24 and is open to students who have worked any hours in between April and Sept. 20 this year.
Last school year, UOSW undertook a massive campaign to get union cards signed, in hopes that they could get them certified by the Oregon Employment Relations Board. According to their counts, they collected over 2,000 signed cards from student workers across campus.
However, shortly after the process of certification began, the university refused to provide accurate lists of employees and their information. This caused UOSW to be caught in an endless legal loop, with the certification they had been fighting so hard for being delayed indefinitely.
“The issue was that the job titles were only listed as student worker or RA. This wasn’t helpful when dealing with a 4,000-person list,” said Carolyn Roderique, an RA on campus and UOSW member.
In April, shortly after the union cards were delivered to the Employment Board in Salem, the university HR sent out emails to all students that had signed union cards that read: “This email serves to notify you that the university has been ordered to provide your name, physical address and job classification to the Employment Relations Board (ERB) insofar as it is responsive to the student worker petition for union representation.” It then gave students the option to object to the disclosure of their information, which would make their endorsement of the union null.
“We had to go through all of the employee lists by hand and pick out who worked here and who doesn’t,” Roderique said. “The burden of UO’s lack of recordkeeping fell on us.”
The email, as well as UO’s general unwillingness to help make their records less confusing, was a clear tactic to create confusion among students. They wanted to see if it was possible to lower the count of students in the union and put responsibility on them to gather all the records of student employment.
The Employee and Labor Relations section of the UO website was recently updated to state
“the university is actively preparing for the launch of the election, and additional information will be provided as it becomes available.” Previously, it had a section on the union card process, but it was completely scrubbed. Students will be sent the link to vote through their UO email, where they can vote yes or no.
“They [UO] have been very cooperative,” Roderique said. “We both agreed on the terms [of] the election settlement.”
Though their union status hasn’t been made official yet, there’s still been major progress on campus. This includes raises for both dining workers and RAs, as well as incremental raises for other student positions. This has and continues to be a major organizing point, but there are always more ways to improve the workplace, especially when students can work together.
“If we had not settled with an election, it’s very difficult to say what would have happened,” Roderique said.
At Kenyon College, student workers undertook a similar process as UOSW to form their union, and they are now enmeshed in talks and processes with their college administration and the National Labor Relations Board indefinitely.
Despite the university weaponizing bureaucracy against UOSW, the union has continued to reach closer to its goals. Student workers should be sure to check their emails starting on Oct. 4 and make their voices heard.
“When we have the power to bargain and bring UO to the table and address the conditions of our workplaces, it’s a lot more powerful than talking to our direct bosses,” Roderique said. “A union is really the most effective way to get what we want and what we deserve.”