The one thing I've learned in my three or so years as a student at the University of Chicago is that it is not only the place where fun comes to die but where decentralized bureaucracy comes to breed. It's no wonder that the University of Chicago, with its Byzantine administrative structure, is the largest employer on the South Side of Chicago. None of its much touted community outreach efforts, then, can possibly match the power and reach of the Human Resources Department (or its attendant mini-HR departments scattered throughout the university) for impact on local communities on the South Side. Nothing a New Communities Program grant or undergraduate service project can accomplish matches the impact of hiring, wage and benefit, and other employment policies on local neighborhoods for both permanent staff and the hundreds if not thousands more who work temporarily on the various campus construction projects. This state of affairs makes current trends in the university's attitude towards workers even more troubling. In the last two years, the university has taken a harder line against workers' internationally recognized right to free association in labor unions.
Despite the debate that rages in this space and others, there are a number of well-documented and pretty incontrovertible facts about labor unions. For the vast majority of workers, union representation means higher wages, better benefits, better job quality (hours worked, etc.) and more stable employment. For employers, union representation means that they have less control over labor costs and flexibility. They generally adopt two stances towards unions, one defensible, one less so. The first is to avoid union representation, fight over contract details if they have unions in their workplaces, and attempt to hold the line on wages and benefits out of a desire to cut costs and hold down labor costs. The second is a more ideological opposition to unionization and worker organizing that relies heavily on the well-funded world of "right to work" consultancy and legal firms.
The University seems to be moving from the first to the second mode of relating to labor unions. Its well-publicized contract fight with Teamsters Local #743 was a typical contract fight, except if you sat through an orientation to working at the university and heard the invective directed towards the union and its workers. It does not take a tin-foil hat to imagine that the poor contract offer and intransigence on the part of the university had something to do with fear of a re-invigorated local under new elected leadership.
A second example is the (uh-oh, here we go) choice of grocery store to replace the Hyde Park Co-Op. The Co-Op, for all its problems, was a unionized grocery store, under RWDSU Local 239, that provided decent wages, hours and benefits in an industry largely given over to non-unionized stores which, if they do provide comparable wages and benefits, use scheduling gimmicks to make it extremely challenging to get the hours one needs to qualify for benefits or make good money. Treasure Island, the university's choice for "our" grocery store, besides being non-union, engaged in a lengthy decertification fight with UFCW locals 881 and 1546. (Here's the Reader's piece on it). While the specifics of the decertification reveal a complicated story, decertification itself is the nuclear option of labor relations and rarely happens without employer complicity and encouragement. The fact that Treasure Island hired one of those union-busting right-to-work firms (whose press release touting their victory seems to have disappeared from their website) to assist it in the fight makes one wonder if the university gave a 20 year lease to an ideologically anti-union store.
The most egregious example of the university in bed with a firm resolutely opposed to workers exercising their right to association is its attempt to impose a no-bid process on the redevelopment of the Doctor's Hospital at 59th and Stony Island. White Lodging, the university's choice of vendor, not only has no union representation at its 100 or so hotels, but also has been accused of intimidation and other shady practices in its fight against worker organizing. The canard that firms like White Lodging and Treasure Island put up is that "we don't need a union, we take care of our workers" is laughable in the extreme in White Lodging's case. White Lodging stands accused of actively attempting to prevent its housekeeping staff at its Midway hotels from taking their state mandated breaks and is being sued by the federal government for discrimination against Muslim employees.
The university's non-union employees, such as teaching assistants, do not offer good advertisements for the dignity and quality of non-union work. TAs receive $1,500 a quarter for teaching undergraduate students, without health insurance. At Northwestern, TAs receive $4,900 a quarter, and at Cornell, $10,000 a semester. It is also disheartening that the unions the university has chosen to pick a fight with or ignore are the most racially diverse unions in the city. Local #743 has large numbers of African-American and women workers who live in local neighborhoods, UFCW 881 is extremely diverse and UNITE-HERE Local #1 has almost 500 African-American workers in the 5th Ward alone.
It's hard to know why the university would act in such ways that indicate it finds labor unions to be antithetical to its stated mission of improving the quality of life in neighborhoods across the South Side. I have no answer for why the University of Chicago has worked mightily in the last two years to weaken the power of institutions that so impact the quality of life in neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Without a serious re-examination of the impact of the University's stance towards workers and unions, its efforts to improve the quality of life in Woodlawn, South Shore, Hyde Park, Washington Park, Kenwood-Oakland and Bronzeville will be mere window dressing and public relations theatre.
Brian / February 6, 2008 8:42 PM
Having worked at the U of C as a non-union student employee, I have no doubt why they hate unions: the employee unions were a total pain in the ass to deal with.
"Not my job description" is the first thing anybody said.
[Huge rant of specifics deleted].
If I had to supervise those whiners, and was prevented from firing the slackers by their union, I'd hate the union too. I wasn't even in charge and I hated dealing with the whiners in the union. Grow the F up and do a good job was a totally alien concept.
And grad students get paid shitty wages because: YOU OUTNUMBER UNDERGRADUATES FOUR TO ONE. Did you just notice this? In a scenario where supply exceeds demand you expected to command a high wage? You are shocked to discover resistance to your effort to form a supply cartel?
Pardon the rant, but aren't U of C students supposed to be smart?