University of Washington librarians are fed up with poor working conditions and are prepared to strike, if necessary.
Since joining the union SEIU Local 925, UW Libraries and UW Press staff have been engaged in acrimonious bargaining with the administration. The university has been playing hardball, dragging negotiations on for more than a year. However, workers are determined to fight back.
In October, union members held a one-day strike to keep up the pressure. On Nov. 17, 94 percent of the members voted to authorize an indefinite strike action if necessary.
The labor dispute has been ongoing for years. In 2020, staff decided to begin organizing, and in June 2021, they won recognition from the Washington state Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC). Workers said that the university refuses to pay competitive wages, which has led to demoralization and high turnover.
Chelsea Nesvig, a research and instruction librarian at the UW Bothell and Cascadia College campuses, said that none of her colleagues have received a wage increase in more than a year.
“Ever since June of 2021, when we were certified as a union and started moving towards this bargaining process, there’s been no raises for anyone in our union, and so that’s been a big challenge because there’s been a lot of inflation,” Nesvig said.
UW spokesperson Michelle Ma said that this wage freeze is mandated by the labor laws that bar employers from unilaterally adjusting wages during the bargaining process.
“The employer is required by law to maintain the status quo for wages and working conditions until there is an agreement with the union,” she wrote.
According to Nesvig, workers usually receive a small annual pay increase, usually amounting to 2 percent, to account for a portion of the increase in the cost of living. However, she said that the university administration canceled this increase in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and in 2021 and 2022 because of the bargaining process.
Precedent in this circumstance is unclear. The National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union relations with private employers, has ruled that such a tactic is illegal if it is motivated by “anti-union animus.” However, because UW librarians and press staff are public employees, this ruling does not apply to them.
According to PERC Executive Director Mike Sellars, public employers are generally required to maintain the status quo during bargaining and should not unilaterally change conditions or pay. Sellars said that the commission, which is helping mediate the negotiations, has not received an unfair labor practice complaint at this time. Even if it is legal for the university to withhold wage increases during bargaining, it is certainly hurting worker morale.
“Last time I got a raise was September 2019,” Nesvig said.
She added that UW’s uncompetitive wages, coupled with challenges from the pandemic, led to significant staff attrition.
“I think we’ve lost close to a third of union-eligible coworkers since we formed our union,” Nesvig said. “There was a time there when it was like, I would open up our weekly newsletter, and every week there’d be another person who’s put in their resignation.”
In an April op-ed in the student newspaper The Daily, UW business librarian Jason Sokoloff said that, while the university is among the top public research universities in the country, its professional librarians earn far less than those at comparable universities.
After doing research into the matter, Sokoloff found that UW ranks as the 46th highest median salary for library professionals out of the 100 universities that were surveyed. When accounting for the Seattle area’s high cost of living, that ranking dropped to 96th out of 100.
To add insult to injury, some smaller, public, four-year colleges and universities such as Evergreen, Western Washington, Central Washington and even Eastern Washington universities have higher librarian salaries.
Nesvig said that, so far, progress in negotiations with the university administration has been slow; however, public pressure, including the recent one-day strike, has helped speed up the process.
“We actually have found that since the strike, negotiating at the bargaining table has picked up the pace on the employer’s side of things,” she said. “So we’ve really been seeing that that action did have an impact.” Nesvig added that the union’s vote to go on strike if their bargaining team deems it necessary is intended to motivate good-faith negotiations from the administration.
One potential explanation for the university administration’s stonewalling could be the prospect of more workers unionizing. While much of UW’s staff is already unionized, most faculty and other academic and professional staff are not currently part of a union. If the librarians successfully win their contract, Nesvig said that could lay a path for future labor organizing.
“I think they’re scared of setting a precedent, because we are basically one of the first-slash-only groups of academic or professional staff to unionize at UW, actually,” Nesvig said.
Ma wrote that the university administration has negotiated in good faith and is hoping to reach an agreement as soon as possible. She also wrote that the university and union have already reached tentative agreements on about 45 aspects of the contract. As of Jan. 4, negotiators have held 32 rounds of bargaining so far.
Ma denied that the administration’s tough response to the library union drive was about setting a precedent, saying the university respects librarians’ right to organize.
“There are nearly 20 collective bargaining agreements with unions at the UW, and more than 22,000 of our employees are represented by a union,” she wrote.
As 2023 begins, a conclusion to the bitter labor dispute remains far away. Both sides are still in talks, though a strike is on the table if workers decide that the administration has failed to negotiate in good faith or offer a satisfactory deal.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the Jan. 4-10, 2023 issue.