Seems a bit late. I wonder what genius thought this up in the first place. Our administration had been trying to increase the cost food-service workers pay for a meal during their shift from $1 to $3. In the face of a strike Monday they’ve now given up that bit of nastiness and increased their COLA raise offer from annual 1.1% real pay cuts to 0.85% cuts. UO staff are signing up for picket line shifts now. If anyone has a link to the SEIU response please post it.
That would have been $60 a month out of the paychecks of some of UO’s lowest-paid workers. Glad they finally realized staff were not interested in doing that. When the president makes close to a million or even more, this just looks petty and shameful.
First, welcome back. While it’s not accompanied by cash or whisky, my gratitude for the forum you’ve built is real, and I had a Big Yellow Taxi moment while you were gone. I appreciate all the effort and time you have to put into the blog beast, and I thank you.
Meanwhile…
The missive copied below was sent amongst the purple people north of your campus. Words are getting more pointed, some staff are feeling tense, worried that a strike might actually happen. I’ve witnessed an argument generated when one who is prepared to strike confronted a co-worker who has stated he’s resigning his membership so when he goes to work on Monday he won’t feel bad about being a scab as he reports to work on Monday morning, as he plans to if the strike indeed happens.
I have heard several on both sides now who feel a sense of relief that, to quote one professor “…at least we’ve gotten through our first few days of classes and the biggest start-of-year issues, unlike the other campuses.”
Until recently, a general feeling perceived by this reporter (a perception arrived at through a decidedly unscientific method of taking the pulse of a not particularly representative slice of the campus community) was that the issues were with our feathered friends upstream and our viking cousins downstream, that the mid-valley campus was just caught up in the whole bargaining and strike shenanigans because of the divorce settlement that left us sharing USSE. A week ago, I heard a lot about Schill’s salary. A week ago, I heard that PSU and UO have lots of campus climate issues in the rank and file. A week ago, I heard people say striking would not be against their peers or their campus per se.
Today I heard one of them invoke Ed Ray as a reason to be on the line on Monday.
We live in interesting times. I long figured it would be late Sunday night and everyone would get the news that a resolution was reached and everyone would report to work Monday morning. Today I’m less inclined to take that bet. While I remain hopeful, I find Bette Davis’ line from All About Eve to be good advice: Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.
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Dear OSU Classified staff:
PRESIDENT RAY: MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE
FAIR CONTRACT NOW!
January 2019: University gives raise to all unclassified staff and instructional faculty averaging 3 percent
January 2019: President Ray receives a 6% raise, and a $179,700 contribution to retirement, and bonuses, putting his salary above $900,000 (plus free car, parking, house(s), custodial service), trips abroad with donors
February 1, 2019:
At our quarterly classified union meeting with President Ray a custodian discussed how some of his fellow staff had to move out of Corvallis and how he could not get by on his salary (even with his wife working full time as well) and keep up with his bills. President Ray: “Corvallis has great foodbanks.”
This is why we will strike September 30. SEIU503/Sublocal 083
Contact your worksite strike captain
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I can’t remember his name, but the fellow in charge when they first started the $3/meal nonsense told us that he didn’t think it was right for students to pay for employee meals – as employees are paid with student tuition.
Hm. Well, I guess it’s okay for students to pay for faculty applicants beautiful meals, housing, and air fare (as well as their spouses).
How about students paying for personal vehicles for admin and coaches? (Don’t bother me with the “they use it for work”).
How many food service workers would one admin’s COLA alone feed? How about the fantastic admin raises? How many student workers would that feed?