Following over 10 months of bargaining sessions, the University of Oregon Student Workers Union is preparing for a potential strike if an agreement with UO administration is not reached — the exact date of when the union could go on strike is unclear. 

As of April 11, UOSW has not submitted a 10-day notice of an intent to strike to the Oregon Employment Relations Board, according to Izzie Marshall, UOSW bargaining team member.

In early March, UOSW held a strike authorization vote —  94.5% of the union voting “yes” to the authorization, but only 60% of the total union participated in the election, according to a social media post by UOSW.

According to Marshall, the union represents roughly 4,000 student workers. 

According to UO’s website, over 160 students work at the campus libraries while nearly 800 students work at the dining halls — 80% of the dining hall workforce. 

Others work at the Erb Memorial Union, as resident assistants, or in other roles at the university.

Dining

According to Marshall, since some dining hall workers play an active role in UOSW, dining hall services will likely see a major impact if the union decides to strike. 

“Imagine handling 6,000 freshmen at 20% capacity; a lot of those essential roles would be empty,” Marshall said.

UO Spokesperson Eric Howald said that “dining services will continue to provide food services to our (UO’s) resident students in the event of a student worker strike.” 

In February, the University of California, Los Angeles worker strike affected dining hall services, which resulted in the university closing some dining halls and changing hours for others. 

It is unclear if UO would take similar actions.

Ashton Pressman, a negotiator for UOSW and a dining hall worker for two and a half years, said UOSW would encourage the campus community not to use cash or bank cards to pay for meals.

Pressman said it would be “unrealistic” to ask students and UO community members with meal plans to avoid using meal points. 

“It’s about not spending real money at the dining halls and so that is like the larger pressure point there: don’t spend money that they don’t already have,” Pressman said. “But asking students to go without trying to eat is not what we’re interested in.”

EMU

Some centers in the EMU, including the Multicultural Center and the Student Sustainability Center, are staffed primarily by students and could be impacted if EMU workers choose to strike. 

“These programs (centers) are essential for students. We understand that,” Valentine Bentz, an SSC worker and union organizer in the EMU for two years, said. “If the university wants these programs to run… they have the chance to avert a strike by meeting our demands now and coming to the table and giving us a good contract.” 

Bentz also said EMU student workers are continually discussing ways student resources could be met if work is slowed or stopped because of a strike. These resources could look like helping address food insecurity or continuing projects. 

“We’re already planning things for the whole spring… so that could be a concern too. If there’s a strike called, what if I’ve been planning something for months? That puts me in a tough spot in a lot of ways. So I think those concerns (of) a lapse in your programming that you are working hard on (arises),” Bentz said.

The total number of EMU workers who go on strike could be challenged by the fact that the EMU workplace is not consolidated, according to Bentz.

“What’s challenging is there’s so many of us in one building and so we kind of group ourselves together and yet most of us don’t work with each other,” Bentz said. “Whereas in some of these other bigger workplaces, there’s more consistent cross-pollination.”

Residence Halls

According to UOSW bargaining team member and Resident Advisor union organizer Ryan Campbell, RAs would strike by not performing on-call duties such as handling roommate disagreements, helping students who are locked out or filing incident reports.

“If we are in the halls and someone comes to us with a pressing emergency: someone is having a medical issue, there is a fire starting (and) it is something that takes it out of our role and is truly just being a good person and using the resources we have, we are still going to encourage our members to help out,” Campbell said.

According to Campbell, non-unionized employees do work in housing and could potentially fill these roles, though Campbell cautioned against this outcome.

“If the university wants to have their prostaff (community directors, assistant directors) handle that they could do that if the university wants to somehow bring in community resource options they could do that,” Campbell said. “They have multiple options they could try but being fully honest none of them are good because all of them involve bringing grown professional staff into the dormitories to deal with the issues.”

Library 

Victoria Robison, a UOSW worker and union organizer at the Knight Library, said students who work in the libraries are primarily responsible for checking out books and organizing the library’s stock.

“If there is a strike… I think that it would be really hard for people to access things that make them able to get education. I think people in classes really rely on the library for like research papers and whatnot,” Robison said.

UOSW hosted town halls to cover strike logistics on April 4, 9 and 10. 

UOSW will also be hosting a practice picket on April 16.

“I’d imagine it (a strike) would be pretty disruptive. We don’t want to go on strike, we want a TA (tentative agreement) and the UO has that ability,” Marshall said. “But if UO doesn’t make progress we will be forced to do whatever it takes and strike if we have to.”