Seattle Press on Line - UW Staff Fight to End Two-Tier Wage Structure

Union News

UW Staff Fight to End Two-Tier Wage Structure

By Sara Longley

Mar 25, 1999 -- At the University of Washington, the Department of Labor Studies recently conducted a day-long series of speakers and workshops on the history and future of organized labor. Students at the UW may be closer than they know to the subject. Among non-academic UW employees, unrest is brewing over pay inequality and lack of bargaining rights.

On March 3, more than 100 UW employees marched into UW President Richard McCormick's office with petitions in hand. They had collected more than 1,400 signatures in support of two items: a fair wage increase and a demand that the UW begin negotiations with their union. They had rolled the pages of signatures diploma-style, and as they presented each 'diploma,' they spoke to McCormick about their frustration with the UW's labor relations policy.

At the UW, there is a two-tier system, where employees covered under state Civil Service employment contracts earn less in wages and have fewer benefits than employees who are represented by District 925 of Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

According to Liz Coveney, interim Assistant Vice President for Human Resources at the UW, these differing contracts date back to 1993, when the state legislature passed legislation allowing publicly-funded colleges and universities to bargain with individual labor groups. This represented an enormous change; heretofore, policy required state employees to negotiate salary increases through the legislature. The new law allowed employees to deal directly with their employer institutions. The employees now had the option of union representation.

Under this law, the UW and District 925 of SEIU negotiated and, in 1994, reached a contract representing 2,700 UW employees. Those employees now have significantly better wages and benefits than other UW staff, and this is the inequality under protest.

Since 1994, 1,400 other UW employees have voted to be represented by SEIU, and all but 600 participate in the better, union contract. The remaining 600 are represented by SEIU but the UW has, so far, refused to bargain with them. The distinction between the groups of employees appears arbitrary, but the legislation allows the UW to take this position. Both the employees and the University must consent to bargain. When asked to comment, Coveney said that the University has "declined the request."

But progress may come. District 925 members went to Olympia March 4 to lobby for better bargaining rights and fair pay, and got a positive response. In Olympia, 925 members were happy to see McCormick there. According to 925 president Dornie MacKenzie, the previous day's meeting in McCormick's UW office had inspired the members' confidence. "When we were in Olympia, our members felt so empowered that whenever we saw [McCormick], we just surrounded him and talked to him, asked him questions..." She said that the biggest concrete accomplishment of the week's actions was that the employees are no longer afraid to talk frankly with President McCormick about their frustrations.

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