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After Syracuse Graduate Employees United ratified its first contract with Syracuse University this spring, Undergraduate Labor Organization members were uncertain about the future direction of their group.

Established in 2022, the ULO’s initial focus was supporting the graduate student labor movement at SU, particularly SGEU, which achieved union recognition in April 2023. ULO worked with graduate students, from supporting petitions to hosting advocacy events.

As SGEU completed its contract negotiations, several ULO leaders graduated, and the club’s membership gradually fizzled out. But, a new freshman board has revitalized the unregistered student organization this semester with a renewed focus on other on-campus unions, current ULO President Mykie Kamberos said.

“A lot of the time, when unions are negotiating with the university or with whatever employer they’re negotiating with, it’s really important to show support from every side,” Kamberos said. “The university takes undergraduate support really seriously, so being able to show that there’s support … is really useful as a bargaining chip.”

With recent strides in the unionization of SU’s hourly student food service and library workers, ULO has focused on advocating for these groups, who recently unionized under Service Employees International United Local 200United.

In April 2024, hourly student food service and library workers at SU voted 99% in favor of recognizing their union. In August, following the unionization, SEIU members rallied outside 727 Comstock Ave. to voice their frustration with the administration’s initial contract offer. Workers and supporters called on the university to redistribute its financial resources to support its employees.

The facilities section of members in SEIU – including libraries, food service, facilities and maintenance workers – reached a tentative contract agreement with SU administration on Sept. 4 and, a few days later, members voted to ratify a four-year contract with SU. The contract included an immediate 10% wage increase.

“Facilities and that (non-student) section of SEIU got their contract ratified. Once that was ratified, now ULO is moving on to the student workers,” Kamberos said. “We’re looking at student workers in dining halls and in the libraries – like workers at Pages (Cafe).”

ULO’s current focus is getting workers to sign petitions to support negotiations for student service workers, Kamberos said. ULO members have been doing outreach and collecting petitions in dining halls across campus, as well as talking to student workers.

One specific topic union efforts have noted is student-employee parking. Student workers have taken issue with the lack of accessible and affordable parking spots available when driving to their on-campus jobs, ULO Vice President Elliot Johnson said.

SU’s Student Association has made efforts to bring these parking concerns to the attention of administrators. SA Vice President Reed Granger discussed this issue during the association’s Sept. 23 meeting and said SA was conducting a survey on the matter.

ULO has faced challenges with “buy-in” from student staff, as many are international students who are able to attend SU through their employment at university facilities, Kamberos said. They said many students are hesitant to get involved with union activity and negotiations because they’re afraid of putting their employment and, as a result, their ability to attend SU, at risk.

In addition to overcoming these concerns on behalf of international students, ULO leaders said one of the organization’s primary goals is increasing student awareness.

“I’ll talk to people in my classes that will say they are working for one of the dining halls or something like that, and they will have no idea that there’s a union or what a union is,” Johnson said. “We’re undergraduates now, but we’re going to go out into the world, and we should have some awareness of the unions that we can join and how they can positively impact our lives.”

To bolster these efforts, the organization has participated in numerous outreach events in partnership with SEIU and other local union organizations. ULO has also collaborated with other campus organizations, such as the SU and SUNY ESF chapter of New York Public Interest Research Group and the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

In hopes of expanding the re-established organization, board members said that in the future, they hope to work with unions beyond SU’s campus.

“After SEIU gets their contract set … we would be moving into other local unions and seeing where in the community we are needed,” Kamberos said, “Right now, we’re focusing on working with those on-campus unions and making sure that our immediate service staff get the help they need, because they do so much for us.”

Published on October 31, 2024 at 1:57 am

Contact Anna: aclevitt@syr.edu