The United Steelworkers (USW) launched organizing campaigns for full and part-time faculty as well as graduate employees at the University of Pittsburgh today at a press conference in Oakland.
Speakers included Hillary Lazar, a Pitt graduate employee, Peter Campbell, an assistant professor, and Kai Pang, representing the chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops.
“Everybody at Pitt needs this union because our working conditions impact the learning conditions of our students, the quality of our research, and frankly, the strength and position of Pitt as a world-class institution,” Lazar said. “So I think it’s time, it’s past time, for us to leverage our collective powers and to start working together to build a more equitable university for all.”
The campaigns will target all of Pitt’s faculty and graduate employees and will include roughly 7,500 total workers. Currently, the average part-time instructor at the university is paid $3,400 per course, which, if figuring in 25 hours of work each week in a semester, amounts to just above the minimum wage.
“Although many of us are well funded, still others are paid at near poverty levels, if not below poverty levels,” Lazar said. “This is the economic inequality and corporatization that’s been so detrimental to workers at large, and it’s hitting us hard in the university as well.”
One of the main goals is to create a democratic workplace where workers will have a voice when it comes to issues that impact them, including wages, benefits and academic freedom.
Kai Pang spoke as a representative of undergraduate students who support the faculty and graduate employees’ organizing efforts and touched on how the faculty’s treatment by the university directly impacts students’ quality of education.
“As the trend of corporatizing higher education sweeps across the country, job security wanes, and wages are cut, all while workloads are increased,” Pang said. “This means less individual attention is afforded to students and employees have less access to necessary resources.”
Although the campaigns are in their infancy, USW organizing director Maria Somma reiterated that all work that is being done now is aiming toward the end result of unionization.
“The goal is to improve the working conditions of the faculty and the graduate employees with a collective bargaining agreement under which many issues can be addressed,” Somma said.
Assistant professor Peter Campbell spoke about the group’s excitement to be on the ground floor of such a momentous organizing effort as well as their gratitude for neighboring university employees at Point Park and Robert Morris who have organized through the USW. He also vocalized their respect and admiration for the University of Pittsburgh and hopes this campaign strengthens the partnership.
“We are all proud to be faculty at Pitt,” Campbell said. “By forming a union, we can work collectively with the university administration to design effective and inclusive policies that help us be the best researchers and teachers we can be—and we hope they’ll support us and work with us in our organizing efforts. The university works because we do.”