Student employees at the University of Oregon launched a unionization campaign at last week’s street fair. 

UO Student Workers, a grassroots organization of student employees, kicked off the campaign with a card-signing initiative. This is a common first step in forming a labor union. 

With tuition rates and cost of living on the rise, students are finding it difficult to balance school and work while also making enough money to live, Kendall McKone, UO sophomore and UOSW member, said. 
“With these jobs, the university is not taking tuition into account,” McKone said. “And being a student is a full time job in and of itself.” 

There have also been complaints, specifically from dining employees, about work conditions and staffing issues.

“We’re trying to target as many dining workers as we can,” McKone said. “Dining workers are part of the backbone of this university, and they’re treated the worst.”

Alex Goodwin, UO student and dining employee of over four years, said he was frustrated with how UO Dining treats its employees. According to Goodwin, many students hold the same responsibilities as the classified workers, who are non-students and union protected. 

“Our job description isn’t fully defined,” Goodwin said. “They treat us like classified workers who get paid a lot more than us.”

Goodwin said he found this frustration is relatively common among student workers. 

“I’ve heard the same gripes pretty much unanimously, from dining workers to anyone that works a student job,” he said. “Minimum wage is never enough, and the month long pay periods are ridiculous.”
Goodwin and McKone have been collaborating with other student workers for months to be able to launch the campaign. 

“We’re going live with our labor campaign during the street fair,” McKone said. “And we did that on purpose.”

The foot traffic at the street fair seemed like an obvious opportunity for UOSW to speak directly with student workers and start their card-signing efforts. But going public with the students also means going public with the administration. 

With any labor campaign comes requests from the working class. According to Goodwin, UOSW is asking for a livable wage, protected benefits, discounted tuition and more accountability from the administration. 

“We realize this is going to be a huge, revolutionary sort of effort,” McKone said. “But we don’t want it to cause more harm than good. The goal isn’t necessarily to anger the admin, but it might be inevitable. We just don’t want to ignite that flame in the wrong way.”

UOSW plans to hold a kickoff event in the EMU Amphitheater on Oct. 20.