Imagine showing up to the first day of fall term and finding lots of dead plants, closed kitchens, no public safety officers and not a library technician in sight. A public university dystopia? Perhaps. A dereliction on the part of the University’s classified staff? Hardly.
If the Oregon University System and the union representing classified staff at all seven public univerisities cannot find common ground on a fair contract during mediation sessions, the union could strike on or before Sept. 29 ­ ­— the first day of fall term.
OUS wants to be able to furlough classified workers at will, for 15 days at a time, in addition to 24 set unpaid furlough days. The union has voted for all state employees take 10, 12 or 14 temporary furlough days during the next two years, and is seeking a similar arrangement from OUS. Fourteen unpaid days is already costly, but it is an acknowledgement that the burdens of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression must be shared by all.
The problem is that classified staff are being asked to carry a disproportionate share of the load.
Along with as many days off as Chancellor George Pernsteiner can throw at them, OUS wants pay increases for classified staff to be frozen for two years. Other state employees represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 503 will have only a one-year freeze. But university employees don’t bargain with the state Department of Administrative Services as all other state workers do. Classified staff have to bargain with OUS, which likes to play hardball by pitting students against these workers who we rely on for essential services on campus.
“Our main objective is to avoid laying off employees,” OUS Director of Labor Relations Rick Hampton recently told the Emerald. “We have only so much money apportioned to us, with a majority of it coming from tuition. We must balance the needs of both the students and employees.”
Send the custodian home unpaid for two weeks or we’ll raise your tuition. Thanks, Rick.
The “needs of the students” will be quite clear to students and their parents if campuses are shut down on the first day of fall term. Before we start blaming the people who keep our campus green and pretty, consider that at Portland State University students are actually members of the union.
PSU did not initially object when 14 student recycling workers wanted to join the union. But now OUS does not want to include the student recyclers — one of few groups of undergraduate students nationwide to join a union — in current
bargaining talks.
That should change, along with a better deal on furlough days and equal treatment of classified workers compared to other state employees. There should also be some evidence that OUS is making administrators share some of the economic burden.
Ideally this dispute will end quickly and a fair contract will allow us to have a fully operational campus come fall term. But if things go wrong anf campus looks a little squalid, students should know who’s to blame.
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