The Oregon University System And Higher Ed's Student Workers

SEIU Local 503, OPEU has filed an Unfair Labor Practice Complaint alleging that Oregon University System (OUS) Board negotiators are refusing to include the first Oregon undergraduate student workers to unionize in on-going union contract bargaining. SEIU Local 503 represents classified workers at seven state campuses and the contract covering these workers is still being negotiated. The larger and separate state worker unit represented by the union seems prepared to settle its contract.

The union recently organized 14 part-time recycling specialists at Portland State University. The unfair labor practice complaint against Chancellor George Pernsteiner and the Oregon State Board of Higher Education concerns their apparent refusal to bargain about the recyclers as part of negotiations over terms of a new contract for the 4,500 classified employees working at Portland State and six other campuses in the Oregon University System.

The recyclers organized their union earlier this year. OUS did not initially object to them being included in gthe larger OUS bargaining unit after Local 503 petitioned ERB on their behalf in April. The recyclers voted unanimously to join SEIU Local 503in July in an election overseen by the Employment Relations Board (ERB). ERB duly certified the union as the bargaining agent for the recyclers. University management told union leaders and the workers during their campaign that voting for the union could result in the recyclers losing their jobs. They may be the first group of undergraduate students to join a union in Oregon under these conditions.

OUS negotiators have refused to bargain over these workers' wages and benefits during negotiations for the entire bargaining unit. The union's complaint asks ERB to find the higher ed board in violation of state law and order the Board to negotiate with the union as part of the current contract negotiations. This move by Board negotiators is typical of the higher ed system in Oregon, which operates from the principle that no problem is so big that it can't be postponed or ignored.

State higher ed union contract negotiations are in mediation. Pernsteiner is demanding that classified workers take up to 24 unpaid furlough days plus whatever additional blocks of 15 unpaid furlough days he thinks necessary over the next two years. He refuses to commit to treating unionized workers equitably and sharing whatever sacrifices may be necessary or called for during Oregon's economic crisis. Surely administrators and managers should have to carry some of the weight, one might think, but Pernsteiner has other ideas. The union is left seeking a deal for classified university workers that resembles the proposed settlement advanced for other state workers.

Pernsteiner is one of several OUS negotiators to show up over the past several union contracts and negotiating cycles. One negotiator quit or was dismissed after she allegedly took the union's side on some classification issues. Others have either been less remarkable or more ethically challenged.

OUS human resources people and their campus counterparts have been steadfast in their refusals over the years to help better define classified bargaining unit work. Students have gradually come to take jobs once done by classified workers and hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of classified workers have been placed in non-represented jobs with short-term individual contracts but with somewhat higher salaries. The effects have been to stratify higher ed classified employment, undercut workers' skills and abilities, channel advancement through the system in peculiar ways which often involve favoritsm and limit union power. This has been done without much accountability on the part of OUS. If taxpayers knew how their money was being wasted in these processes and had a grasp of the shortsighted self-interest involved in making these decision they would be up in arms. A joint process agreed to by the union and OUS was put in place to correct this situation a few years ago, but that fell apart when OUS-driven inertia stymied it.

Students working on campus need to organize as workers, either in one of the already-existing campus unions or in a union or pressure group solely of their creation. They make very little and often do the same work as classified workers. They are denied a voice on the job. Most working students are working class people trying to do better for themselves. Some move from their student jobs into classified employment and stay there. The universities often try to disguise their status and manipulate them and segregate them from other workers. Their wages, like the wages of other workers, has a determining effect on local economies. Even a small but well-publicized job action or strike by students at an opportune moment--during a major football game, say, or at the very beginning or end of term--could have a tremendous effect on the campuses.