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Support Campus Workers' Right to Organize! |
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USAS has always recognized that the only way improve conditions for workers, whether in garment factories, bottling plants, or in our dining halls, is to support their struggles to organize into unions and bargain contracts. We've seen the kinds of union-busting tactics used on campus, and and taking these practices head-on by demanding a Campus Labor Code of Conduct that would make our campuses an environment where workers can exercise their rights to form unions free form discrimination and harassment.
The Right to Organize Campaign
Fall 2006
This Fall semester, USAS is launching an ambitious new campaign that will vastly strengthen the power of the campus labor movement. Through the Campus-Labor Code of Conduct, university administrations will be forced to respect workers’ voice on the job and right to form a union without intimidation, discrimination, and harassment.
The Problem:
- Campus workers who try to organize and form unions in colleges and universities face union-busting measures, undemocratic methods of union recognition, and labor law that doesn’t support workers. Campus workers face the same challenges as any other low-wage service worker
- Dead-end jobs: Low-wage university jobs often include abusive treatment, excessive working hours, dangerous conditions, and wages that are inadequate to meet basic needs.
- Illegal repression: When workers organize and demand improvements, they are subject to threats, harassment, illegal firings, and discrimination.
- The race to the bottom: As universities increasingly style themselves as corporations, administrators are cutting wages as a way to force costs to a bare minimum. In this reality, workers and their unions have been struggling for wages and benefits that allow workers to meet their basic needs.
The Solution:
- Campus workers’ rights have a voice on the job need to be upheld. Universities can support workers’ rights to organize with a truly democratic process in a neutral environment, free from intimidation and harassment.
- A voice on the job: The best way to eliminate sweatshop conditions is for workers to have the power to advocate for their interests on a daily basis through the collective voice of a union. Universities uphold the right of workers have this voice.
A truly fair and free process: Universities must commit to a neutral environment, where workers can access information about union organizing and make the decision for themselves, and receive union recognition by the method they choose.
- An alternative to the Wal-Mart model: The race to the bottom is fueled by degrading pay and working conditions on campus through union busting practices, as we have seen with Wal-Mart. We must create an alternative model – a race to the top – in which universities demonstrate respect for worker rights – not just low costs – and in which worker victories are sustained and protected.
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