Responses to Questions from Our Colleagues
We received some very thoughtful questions this week from a group of our concerned colleagues. Our workplace has changed a lot since we’ve come together as a union, and we are so grateful for the opportunity to connect with each other and share information. These are very common questions: we’re excited to tackle them together! Here are some things our colleagues are concerned about:
Very specifically, what more do you seek that has not already been addressed, or is in the process of being addressed?
You can find the answer to some of these questions in our mission statement and testimonials from members! Ultimately our specific bargaining priorities will be identified once we circulate our bargaining survey, which will give us the opportunity to poll all members of our union for what we care most deeply about. Our union is a majority of DUP workers, and the more people who join, the stronger representation and more voices we have in determining bargaining priorities.
From talking with one another, we’ve realized that many of us share concerns about low pay, our inability to move up on Duke’s pay scales over time, high rates of turnover, lack of opportunities for career advancement and raises, equity, and FMLA policies. All of these are issues that other unions at Duke University have been able to address through contract negotiations.
We also care deeply about securing the parts of our employment that we already love and enjoy, such as our health benefits, retirement benefits, flexible work arrangements. As we have experienced in the past, the Duke administration can unilaterally change these things at any time. A union contract is the only way to provide more security for the benefits we need. Without codifying in a contract the great things we love about our jobs, we risk losing them should management decide to cut them.
Have you all, as individuals, gone directly to Dean with your very own concerns?
Yes, we have! And we are so excited to continue meeting and building on that relationship. We want to be part of the conversation together and help make positive changes collaboratively.
You can find a more thorough answer to this question here. Our union is about us; it’s not about Dean. It’s about us acting together and for each other. The pressure can’t all be on Dean to do everything, and big decisions about our pay and benefits aren’t even solely within Dean’s power to secure. A union gives us the opportunity to negotiate directly with the Duke administration for better pay and benefits, so we can take that off Dean’s plate!
How often will you be renegotiating a contract? A bargaining and negotiating environment does not guarantee permanent conditions, right?
We’ll reach an agreement with the Duke administration on how often to renegotiate our contract. Generally union contracts last 2–5 years; the other unions at Duke renegotiate every three years.
A contract does not guarantee permanent conditions, but it guarantees stable conditions for years. A union allows us to bargain together with union protections rather than negotiate with our supervisors alone or accept unilateral decisions from Duke management.
A negotiating environment actually does guarantee us our current conditions! Once we are certified, we’ll enter a period known as status quo protections. Under status quo, Duke management cannot take away what we enjoy about our hours, wages, and working conditions without first bargaining with us. We’ll all remain safely enrolled in our healthcare, on track to receive regular raises/promotions; anything that’s part of Duke’s regular practice toward us gets locked in place for the entire time we are negotiating. Then we’ll vote on the contract that comes out of our negotiations. Why would we vote on a contract that would include losses for us?
In fact our current working environment does not guarantee permanent conditions. We are all at-will employees, meaning that Duke management can terminate or demote any of us at any point without justification (the only exception to that is that they aren’t allowed to terminate anyone based on discriminating factors such as race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.). Being an at-will employee also means that Duke can change anything about our current working conditions at any moment, without our consent.
Our contract will make us just cause employees, meaning that we can’t be disciplined, demoted, or terminated without just cause.
We have seen our at-will status in action not only with last year’s austerity measures but also with the abrupt reorganizations, the most recent of which resulted in the loss of jobs for two of our colleagues. Duke management can and has made unilateral changes to our benefits and working conditions in the past without our input. That’s why we have assembled together now, so those sort of changes can never happen without employees’ input in the future.
What are you willing to negotiate and sacrifice in exchange for the improvements you seek?
We aren’t willing to sacrifice anything that we currently enjoy. We will be negotiating with the Duke administration for a contract that helps make our jobs and our benefits more secure; when we do this together, we are very powerful! Thankfully our status quo protections will mean we won’t have to sacrifice anything while we’re bargaining, and provide a good floor to go into negotiations with. We are excited to come together and work collaboratively with the university to make the Press as strong as possible!
More importantly, if you are a non-supervisory employee at the Press, you are part of our bargaining unit as well! We will be taking a survey for bargaining priorities and electing a bargaining team, and we are stronger when there are more voices involved.
Can you speak to the current job reclassifications that are on hold as a direct result of the petition to form a union?
We were very sad to hear that Duke management decided to freeze some of our promotions, citing status quo as the reason. There is nothing about status quo that prevents the university from granting promotions, raises, and job reclassifications that they had promised. Status quo sets a floor, not a ceiling. In fact, the NLRB explicitly says that employers “may change employees' wages or benefits during a union campaign if [they] would have made the change had the union not been on the scene.” Many of us have shared our concerns about this with Dean and we’re hopeful about a response, but again, this was very likely not Dean’s decision, and we look forward to addressing it together and fighting for each other. We are powerful together.
What leverage does the union have in terms of bargaining with Duke University?
We have the power of our work, of the value and prestige we bring to the university. It is a shame that so many of us have felt at some point that we, and our work, are so worthless to the university that the Duke administration would just close our doors simply because we are trying to exercise our federally protected right to come together and have a say over our working conditions. The university appears willing to continue recognizing that we are valuable! They’ve granted many raises and promotions since they learned we were coming together as a union. They’re spending quite a bit of money on high-powered attorneys devoted solely to prevent us from unionizing. That’s a lot of dough they’re clearly willing to spend in response to us. We must have some power!.
Are our jobs here a pure act of charity from the university? Are our salaries considered tax-deductible charitable donations for Duke? Of course not! We are valuable to the university and to its mission; you, our concerned colleagues, are valuable. Your work and your lives and your health are valuable, and we will continue to fight as hard as we can, always, to ensure that all of our jobs are as secure as possible and that we have the pay and benefits we deserve. We are extremely powerful when we act together! But we are committed to fighting for each other, supporting each other, protecting each other, and valuing each other.
We’re also very glad to say that our union colleagues across Duke University also have leverage and they, too, know that all of us as Duke employees together are even more powerful. We’ll join the community of the Duke Faculty union, the bus drivers in ATU Local 1328, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 465, Duke Graduate Students Union, and AFSCME Local 77 at Duke, many of which have all shared moving statements in support of us. And we are committed to supporting them––that’s what unity and solidarity looks like.
Thanks to our amazing colleagues who have given us the opportunity to engage these pressing questions!