Opinion: In the wake of a surge of student-led unionization, the university is carrying out obvious retaliatory measures.
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On Saturday, Feb.11, the undergraduate union organizer Will Garrahan was fired following his shift at Fresh Marketcafé at the Global Scholars Hall dining hall. Before that, the working day was just like any other. When he clocked in, his manager even complimented how good of a worker he was. Garrahan soon felt the irony in that, as it was the same manager that fired him a few hours later.
The previous Tuesday, Garrahan had taken a bowl of food with him at the end of his shift. Though that is against the rules, according to Garrahan and other student dining workers, nearly everyone does it –– including the managers. All the leftover food is thrown away at the end of night, and dining workers don’t get free shift meals, a combination that leads many who work to take otherwise wasted food for themselves.
“To my knowledge, no one has been fired for taking food except me. I was targeted for being an organizer,” Garrahan said.
UO Student Workers, the unionization effort Garrahan is a leading member of, has been gaining traction since the fall of 2022. According to UOSW’s count, they currently have over 1,300 union cards signed and boast active participation campuswide. They are working on forming an undergraduate student union with the goals of improving working conditions and pay, especially for dining workers.
“Student dining workers start at minimum wage and are capped at $15.50 an hour,” Garrahan said. “Dining student workers are most likely to be the less privileged and more likely to have food security issues.”
It’s reported that 36% of UO students experience food insecurity at some point in their college career. Having to work for such low pay in demanding food service and retail jobs doesn’t have to be the necessary evil it’s painted as. When these workers decide to improve their conditions, they shouldn’t be targeted for it.
Garrahan isn’t the only worker involved with UOSW to be experiencing retaliation. One of his coworkers, a student shift lead, has been continually called into bogus performance reviews and criticized for changing into her work shirt in the locker room ––, despite the fact that her male coworkers are never told off for doing the same. Another coworker, upon management finding about her involvement with UOSW, had her hours halved. Both these situations are unacceptable; students are well within their rights to be organizing a union.
A form of pushback dining employees have also experienced is being told not to wear union pins, even though management has never voiced any issues with pins on their hats or uniforms in the past.
“When we started to introduce union pins, a new rule was made to not allow pins on hats. Full-time employees had to throw away hats with pins glued on them,” Garrahan said.
On Friday, Feb. 17, about a week after his termination, a rally was held in front of GSH to protest Garrahan’s wrongful firing. Many of his coworkers attended, some of them walking off shift in solidarity. After a series of speeches outside, the protestors walked inside, holding letters that spelled out “Rehire Will” and delivering a petition to reinstate Garrahan with 150 dining worker signatures to the manager on shift, who had hidden in the back. After that, the group marched to the Student Housing Office at Justice Bean Hall and concluded the rally in front of it.
“It was incredible to have such a powerful rally with such short notice,” Garrahan said. “The community has spoken: People are supporting the union effort and don’t want to see any more union busting on campus.”
Even with no official university response to the union busting measures that have taken place, UOSW forges on. They are continuing with their unionization campaign, hoping to reach enough of a threshold of signed union cards to file for an official vote next month.
“It’s not just about me. It’s about EMU workers who were told they couldn’t talk about the union on the clock [and] RAs told they’re student leaders not workers, even though they work long hours into the night dealing with traumatic situations with little mental health support,” Garrahan said. “It’s about everyone on campus not getting paid properly for the work they do.”
