Op-Ed on Community Standards at UVM

By Colin M. Robinson '06

The University of Vermont is in a time of both transition and great success. It is a time when national attention around the academics, the student body and the "Vision" of the University is at peak. The administration has aspirations which would lead UVM back to the days of "Public Ivy" status and once again find its place among the top institutions of higher education in America. They also have aspiration to make the University not only the premier environmental University but also a leading institution for social and economic justice. President Fogel at his convocation address specifically mentioned UVM's need to "walk the walk" when is comes to issues of social and economic justice. However, currently this is not a reality.

The reality is that while UVM is in a time financial health and record enrollment, the workers that make this University tick — the faculty who teach us, the staff who help us, and the construction workers who are building the "vision" — are not all being given community and family sustaining wages and benefits. The full and part-time faculty union, United Academics, have both reached contract impasse with the University over these specific issues. They are being offered salary increased which do not keep up with the cost of living and rollbacks in benefits. This directly affects the Universities ability to attract and retain high quality faculty and thus OUR education.

The United Staff campaign to organize the 1,800 staff workers at UVM is battling against the University to give the staff collective bargaining rights to guarantee quality benefits, safe work places, and community sustaining wages. The University is using anti-union web pages and worker intimidation to make sure this is not a reality.

Furthermore, we need to make sure that the 9 million dollars in student fees which will go into the new Dudley H. Davis Student Center is not only being used for environmental sustainability but also community sustainability. This is to say that we must make sure that the workers building UVM make enough money to pay for their own children to come here. We must make sure the ideals of social and economic justice are literally built into the construction of the University, not just those of environmental justice.

As members of the University community and customers of the University — the ones paying for this University — it is impetrative that we make sure we are offering all workers at UVM livable wages, fair contracts, and freedom to organize. As we make strides towards being a "Public Ivy" we need to make sure the ideals of social justice are not lost in the national rankings. We must follow the lead of prestigious institutions of higher education like Georgetown University who as of fiscal year 2006 implemented "A Just Employment Policy" which gives livable wages to all employees and the ability to freely associate and organize. Students must show their support and solidarity with those who make the University of Vermont work — the faculty, the staff and the construction workers. Students must make sure social and economic justice at UVM is not just language but a reality; we must make sure UVM "walks the walk".

Join other students, staff, community members and faculty for the "Rally for Fair Faculty Contracts at UVM", Friday, September 23rd at 5pm to march from the AFL-CIO state convention at the Sheraton in South Burlington to the steps of the Royall Tyler Theatre. Make social justice a reality.

Colin Robinson is a student at UVM and a member of the Student Labor Action Project

Labor movement gives all of society a lift

By James Haslam

When we celebrate Labor Day, we celebrate the contributions of the hard-working families who get up every day to make society run. Postal workers deliver our mail, iron workers construct our buildings, firefighters and health care workers save our lives, educators teach our children, retail clerks pour our coffee with a smile, and countless other people spend most of their waking lives collectively making society happen.

Labor Day is also a time to celebrate victories won by the labor movement: the weekend, the eight-hour workday, employer-funded health care, a more humane workplace, and Social Security. As these gains erode, the need for a new labor movement based in our communities, workplaces, and homes is increasingly important.

Too many of us work in unhealthy and demeaning jobs and receive too little in return. At work, we leave our constitutional rights at the door. The values we cherish most as Vermonters — freedoms of speech and assembly, a fair trial — apply at work only when we organize and win as workers. Unions are not only important for those workers who negotiate a contract with their employer. When nurses at Fletcher Allen Health Care organized a union and bargain wage increases, their peers at other hospitals often get big raises as a result.

But it's more than that. The corporate system has its own vision for society. It thrives when we are insecure, disposable, interchangeable, caught up in a war of all against all. Native Vermonter and union activist Pattie Russell knows this all too well. In her 18 years of working at Burlington's Specialty Filaments plant, Russell's neck was injured by a steel pipe, and she was also forced to undergo shoulder surgery from repetitive motions. For her hard work and dedication, Russell was offered a mere two weeks of severance pay when a venture capital firm decided to close her plant, eliminating more than 100 good jobs. Russell and her union joined with the Vermont Workers' Center to wage a campaign to fight back and win a fair severance.

Many unionized manufacturing jobs are leaving Vermont — affecting 8,000 families in the past four years alone — and are mostly being replaced with low-wage, mostly non-union service and retail jobs.

A strong labor movement is essential to the health of a society. The labor movement has its own vision for a society based on solidarity, civil rights, healthy families, and sustainable communities. A strong labor movement also looks beyond its own self-interest, to the rights of workers throughout the world. This is why the national AFL-CIO voted unanimously to bring the troops home as quickly as possible from Iraq at their July convention, and why the Vermont Workers Center opposed the Iraq War before it began. We support our Iraqi counterparts who are organizing unions to improve their communities and risk their lives to democratize the new Iraq.

This past year in Vermont, we saw how the labor movement can be dedicated to broader social uplift. The Vermont AFL-CIO, Vermont-NEA, and Vermont State Employees Association joined others to help lead the fight for health care as a basic right and for a publicly financed universal health care system. The Fletcher Allen nurses and other health care unions are working together on a special campaign to create safe staffing laws to improve conditions for patients and nurses at health care facilities throughout Vermont.

This Labor Day, let's honor the fact that there are people in Vermont and around this country in the labor movement dedicated to fighting for the rights of all working families.

The stakes are high, and we all need to get involved. So we're asking you not only to join us to celebrate Labor Day, but to help us create the improved society that we all deserve.

James Haslam is the director of the Vermont Workers' Center/Jobs With Justice