By Daegan Miller
One of PSU’s greatest strengths is its size: it’s a big union. Made up of staff at both UMass Boston and UMass Amherst, there are three units. There’s Unit A, which, here at Amherst, includes about 1,500 of PSU’s 1,600 members. Because of its size, Unit A can sometimes steal all the attention, but the Amherst chapter also has a Unit B (and Boston has a Unit C, made up of the school’s coaches).
We all like to say that UMass works because we do, but it’s our Unit B colleagues, friends, and comrades who keep the physical infrastructure of our campus running.
If you’ve ever parked your car or bike in a freshly plowed space, enjoyed the warmth or air conditioning in your office, eaten a meal on campus, used a bathroom, or had your work space cleaned, you have Unit B to thank. They are the managers who oversee all the trades work done on campus, and if they can’t, or don’t do their jobs, the campus shuts down.
For this interview, I got to sit down with Unit B’s bargaining team members, Mike Dufresne and Brad Turner (who is also PSU Amherst’s co-chair, along with Andrew Gorry), to discuss everything from whether or not protest is still possible under Chancellor Reyes to how Unit B’s contract differs from Unit A’s, to the abysmal working conditions faced by assistant food managers on campus.
Daegan Miller (DM): I think everyone in the union has heard so much about Unit A’s contract, but Unit B’s is different and bargains separately from Unit A. Tell me a little about what Unit B is bargaining for and the differences between the two units’ contracts.
Mike Dufresne (MD): The first thing to know is that Unit B is much smaller, less than 100 members. We’re classified staff, which means we get paid an hourly wage, not a salary. We’re also already on a step system—but it has 14 steps, which means it takes 14 years to reach the top of your pay grade, and the steps are tiny. Depending on your grade, you might see only $30 or $40 more in each bi-weekly paycheck for each step up the ladder. Because UMass Boston doesn’t have a Unit B, we only bargain with the Amherst campus.
It’s ridiculous to think that it should take one of our members 14 years to reach the top of their grade—professors get tenure in half the time. So a big part of our bargaining platform is to cut the step system down to seven steps, just like Unit A is bargaining for, and we want to do that partly by cutting all the lowest steps. For instance, a grade 13 step 1 makes only $1,834.20 every two weeks. That’s $47,689 a year or less than $23 per hour for full-time work at the state’s flagship university.
The other big thing we’re pushing against is the gross inequality in pay suffered by our assistant food managers.
DM: Wait. Aren’t we the #1 ranked university for best campus food?
MD: We are! Our assistant food managers do an awesome job. They purchase all the campus food…
Brad Turner (BT): …These folks are masters of logistics and finances, and they work under intense pressure. Meals have to be served on time, there has to be enough to eat, and the food has to be healthy and tasty. And it is! We’re recognized by the Princeton Review as the Best Campus Food in the nation for the seventh year in a row because of our assistant food managers.
MD: Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that the last time we bargained a contract, we were were able to win a title review (what Unit A would call an equity review) for every position in Unit B, and we won big for all of them—some got as much as a $6/hour raise—except for the assistant food managers. Management looked us in the eye and told us that if the assistant food managers wanted fair pay and decent working conditions, then they could go find them somewhere else because management had dozens of other people just waiting to take the job. They told us that all the assistant food managers were totally replaceable.
If all of Unit A knew what our assistant food managers were going through, there would be outrage. Right now, we’re not only working on increasing their pay, but also creating a career ladder. We’ll be reaching out more to the whole union on this front soon, but for now, just know that the university’s #1 ranking comes at an unbearable cost to Unit B.
DM: As you know, management walked away from the Unit A bargaining table in August. Have they walked away from yours, too?
BT: Actually, no. We’ve wrapped up presenting our proposals, and we continue to meet every two weeks.
MD: Chancellor Reyes has been very good at coming into Unit B—he has praised us for our work during snowstorms, and when we were called out to help support the police during the May 7th protests, he personally came and thanked us for our work. In all his time at UMass, Swamy never once showed us that kind of consideration.
DM: I’m really pleasantly surprised to hear this…and, honestly, a little jealous. Do you think this is some sort of strategy to drive a wedge between the units?
MD: (Laughs) They’re always trying to drive a labor-splitting wedge! Sometimes it’s between different unions, or faculty and staff, or units within a union. The most important thing is that we all stand together, and I don’t just mean Unit A and B, I also mean all the unions on campus. We’re all in this together, and if one union or unit takes a special sweetheart deal, then the rest of us suffer.
BT: The other thing Reyes’s preferential treatment shows is that he is capable of treating staff with decency! Our job is to make sure that he treats all staff fairly, and not just a few preferred units.
DM: Mike, as I understand it, one of the ways that Unit B won big the last time at the bargaining table (with the exception of the assistant food managers), is that you all occupied Whitmore. I know that, in the wake of the May 7th protests and Reyes’s response, many folks on campus are afraid that management will retaliate, even violently or with absurd legal charges. You’ve been here for 35 years–what do you think?
MD: Do not be afraid to be active! The only reason that we won that job reclassification was that we staged the sit-in at Whitmore—and, by the way, we were joined by many folks from Unit A, as well as other unions on campus. AFSCME members even encircled Whitmore with their trash trucks and blew their air horns! It was incredible, and management immediately came back to the table and negotiated the raises we demanded.
Do not be afraid to be active, but do be strategic about it. When we occupied Whitmore, it was clear that our negotiation was at a dead-end and that management wasn’t going to budge.
BT: We actually just had a very important test case for our legally protected concerted union activity. We hosted a standout during homecoming to protest management’s refusal to bargain with Unit A, and we did not request a land-use permit, which is how Reyes justified calling hundreds of police to break the May 7th student protests. We broadcasted our standout way ahead of time, we had bullhorns, we were holding signs and chanting, and though management sent their representatives to keep an eye on us, they remained peaceful. I want to echo Mike here: do not be afraid to be active!
DM: Any last thoughts? What would you want the whole union to know?
MD: We in Unit B know that we’re going to need help to win our proposals, and we’re going to be asking the whole union to come to our aid. Unit A is going to need our support, too—let’s stand together and show up for each other.