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UPDATED: April 24th at 8:10 p.m.

Hourly student food service and library workers at Syracuse University voted 99%, or ​​1146 to 1, in favor of recognizing their union, according to a Wednesday afternoon Service Employees International Union Local 200United press release.

The vote was held in the JMA Wireless Dome from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday. The group, which is mostly comprised of graduate and some undergraduate students, announced its plans to begin unionization efforts through SEIU earlier this semester.

“We’re so excited these student food service and library workers joined together in our union. Our members will continue to make sure students are well-fed and library services are top notch,” Scott Phillipson, SEIU President, said in the press release.

The union will work to improve pay rates, “unhealthy” working conditions and worker-manager relations. Around 750 graduate students work by the hour for SU’s Food Services and 150 students are hourly library workers.

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A spring 2023 survey from SU’s Graduate Student Organization and Graduate Employment Issues Committee found the pay rate of general food service employees to be $15.30 an hour, with student supervisors earning $16.16 an hour. About 55% of student hourly workers reported having a second job or working in multiple locations, graduate student Bertram Probyn said when he presented the survey at GSO’s February meeting. In the survey, only 4% of food service workers reported feeling that management at their jobs is approachable.

An SEIU organizer, who requested to remain anonymous, said the campaign was inspired after graduate student workers voted to recognize Syracuse Graduate Employees United in April 2023.

“Some student workers who work in dining … saw that grad students last year were organizing and were like, ‘This is really cool. We want to see the union difference in our workplace,’” the organizer said. “They had this meeting last year in April right after the SGEU win, and then people started organizing.”

Student organizers have been actively working since the fall, they said, and began the unionization process with SEIU in February, gathering signatures from more than 30% of the student workers.

At a Feb. 7 GSO meeting, the GSO Senate passed a resolution endorsing the hourly food service worker unionization campaign. In March, representatives from the group told The Daily Orange that the proposed union, which had already begun to gather support, would also include hourly library workers.

Drew Van Dyke, a student library worker, said the union vote felt like a “climax” of a long process.

“There’s been a lot of meetings, a lot of canvassing, a lot of conversations with other workers, a lot of just kind of getting to know the structure of how things work on campus … and convincing people that this will be a good thing,” said Van Dyke. “Now it all comes down to this.”

Van Dyke said he felt bittersweet that the “chapter” has ended, but is very excited because he feels they are on the “crust of a great wave.”

The security of union recognition for library and food service workers follows SGEU’s ratification of their first contract with SU in March. The contract includes a median 24% stipend increase for the 2024-25 academic year, improved financial support for international students and extended health care coverage through SU.

Roger Rosena, a graduate student who was involved in elections for both SGEU and the food and library service workers, said that he has seen a “sea of change” on campus.

“A lot of people, students and even non-students, have been influenced by what we do,” Rosena said.

Over 800 other SEIU Local 200United union workers on SU’s campus in buildings, ground and dining services will begin negotiating their new collective bargaining agreements this year, according to the press release. SU’s administrative, professional and technical staff aims to hold their union election by the end of May.

Having secured union recognition, the representatives of the hourly student workers group can now begin to meet with the university to bargain for a fair contract that addresses their concerns.

“With the union election now complete, Syracuse University and SEIU Local 200United, the union that will represent the student food services and libraries workers, will meet to determine a schedule for negotiating a collective bargaining agreement,” a university spokesperson wrote in a statement to The D.O. “The University is committed to working collaboratively and in good faith to reach a fair contract that supports and reflects the important contributions of these student workers.”

Van Dyke said the next step is to understand workers’ bargaining priorities and what they want out of the union, while also increasing the union culture at the university.

“Unions … provide spaces where people are with people that have something in common with them despite having different jobs,” Van Dyke said. “A longer goal is to bring that kind of union culture and that kind of culture of solidarity into this campus and into people’s lives.”

News Editor Kendall Luther contributed reporting to this article.

Published on April 24, 2024 at 4:25 pm

Contact Ahna: arflemin@syr.edu