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Workers at the University of Rochester have formed the UR Labor Coalition in their efforts to expand union representation and recognition.
The coalition, representing graduate students, fellows, academic, research and IT staff, and faculty, brings together SEIU Local 200United, Teamsters Local 118, and the Graduate Labor Union. GLU sought to strike last year following unsuccessful negotiations with URochester over a private election agreement that would allow the group to unionize.
Coalition members say the working group seeks to provide solidarity and support to all university workers, whether unionized or not.
“It’s an agreement between many different types of workers on campus to work together in (support of) their unionization efforts,” says Keelin Quirk, an organizer with the coalition.
Demands by the coalition include stronger union representation and recognition among those currently not unionized, as well as the ability to negotiate over wages, health care, and other benefits workers would receive under a recognized bargaining unit.
“A significant thing is people’s inability to meet their basic needs (as workers),” says Emefa Amoah, a GLU organizer. “It’s also your ability to take a leave of absence without losing funding (or) health insurance.”
The desire for union representation has grown among members and supporters in the wake of the Trump administration’s policies over grant funding toward universities like URochester. Supporters believe the university must do more to protect its workers through unionization. The Graduate Labor Union, in recent months, has also advocated for stronger sanctuary protections against immigration enforcement activities on campus.
“In this time of stress, the university is cutting back on all sorts of things,” says Michael Scott, senior faculty member of the university’s computer science department. “Faculty who are dependent on research grants are not only facing a huge loss of funding from Washington, they’re also facing increasing demands from the administration to fund university operations more heavily from grants than they have in the past. “We will be a better university, a better and stronger community, if everybody has a voice.”
Despite the added boost in solidarity among labor unions in Rochester, conversations about union recognition with university administrators have continued to fall short, coalition members say. “There has not really been any communication with the administration,” says Quirk. “The university has continued to really hold out against any communication with us.”
UR spokesperson Sara Miller says the university remains committed to “always working in good faith with our unions to achieve fair and equitable contracts, and treating each and every employee fairly–both those who are union represented and those who are not.”
Next steps for the coalition include further conversations with university workers on pathways to unionization and collective bargaining.
Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort.
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No matter where a democracy exists in the world the right of workers to join or form a union and collectively bargain is a required right. It is as necessary to democracy as voting, due process, and trial by jury. International organizations rate the strength of worker rights in democracies on a scale of one to five with five being the worst. For many years the U.S. has been near the bottom with a four rating and under current court and government actions we are headed to be the lowest. The fact is that our most significant post-secondary educational institution, in spite of their lofty empty statements, has refused to recognize these worker’s rights and engage IN ANY collective bargaining. It is a sad state of affairs and all of Labor and concerned people will rally to support these workers.