United Campus Workers: Daring to Organize at the University of Tennessee

Their goal is 11,000 members at University of Tennessee facilities across the state, plus a presence on the campuses of other state and community colleges. That, believes Local 3865 President Tom Smith, would provide the kind of clout necessary to demand a collective bargaining law and the leverage to bargain effectively.

But he and fellow members of the currently much smaller United Campus Workers-CWA (UCW) are quite pleased with the progress they've made so far. They've grown over the past seven years from a few isolated individuals with the gumption to stand up to management, to a solid 500-member organizing local that has successfully used the legislative process to win significant raises for UT workers.

Their story begins in the late 1990s. Custodial and support staff at the university barely earned minimum wage. Workers who cleaned toilets were exposed to the risk of disease. So Sandy Hicks, who worked as a dormitory housekeeper, pulled together a small group to launch a living wage campaign and to push the university to provide hepatitis B vaccine. They weren't even thinking of themselves as a union, but the issues gave them something to organize around and their leafleting and picketing made them a presence on campus.

They lost on living wage but, said Hicks, "For a long time, we had asked the university to give us hepatitis B shots and they kept saying no. When we came together as a group, they finally gave them to us."

The workers learned to build on their successes. "Nonmembers began seeing that we were getting somewhere and that their only hope was fighting the administration as a group," said Hicks, who as founding president led her fledgling union to join CWA.

The UFC moved toward affiliation with CWA in 2002, a process that was completed early the next year. Younger activists like Smith, then a student working fulltime for the university, got involved.

"Making less than a living wage while trying to go to school, struggling to make ends meet and seeing my co-workers do the same — I realized that would never change unless we came together," he said.

Smith became a steward in the local and took the lead in organizing the library where he worked on the Knoxville campus. "We had two members out of a possible 185," Smith said. "We put out flyers and held meetings down at the local coffee shop, all on our own time," he said.

One or two library workers joined each month, then they set up an information table outside and 25 signed up. They're now more than 50 strong.

The local used the same model all across the Knoxville and Chattanooga campuses. "We've put a lot of emphasis on organizing committees run by our members," Smith said. "They're the best folks for understanding how a place works. They're the people at the job site every day."

UCW also hired a full-time organizer, Cameron Brooks, who first got involved as a student while participating in the AFL-CIO's Union Summer internship program. He graduated from the university in 2001, took an administrative support job in UT's social work research office and started looking to build the union from the inside.  With local Vice President Pat Kerschieter, he helped develop the local's strong legislative program.

"Our emphasis shifted to building a long-term organization, and we started to take the battle off campus," Brooks said. Their strategy was to have the state legislature appropriate funds for across-the-board cash raises, which are of greater benefit to low-wage workers than percentage increases.

In the first couple of years, they succeeded in getting $750 per worker.  Then in 2005, inspired by the work of CWA's Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, they put together a program of ongoing, systematic legislative work, which has paid even greater dividends in winning raises and also saving jobs.

Kerschieter explained how the local built an annual cycle of recruiting legislative activists through phone banking and e-mail. They take about 20 to the state capital, Nashville, for a "lobby day" in January or February, near the beginning of the legislative session. They go back in March or April after the state budget has been introduced, then return several times in smaller numbers to meet with legislators and attend committee hearings.

This June, the local won an across-the-board $900 raise: at least a 3 percent increase for all UT workers and as much as 5 percent for the lowest paid.

They also succeeded in getting the university to reverse its decision to privatize custodial services and in getting senior custodial staff rehired. One woman who had done that work for 10 years regained her job, got a raise of about $4,000 and, for the first time, health care benefits.

"The first thing she did," Smith said, "was join the UCW."