An Overview of USC Campus Workers' Struggles for Justice
USC's dining and housing workers, janitors, nurses, and faculty members have engaged in labor struggles for fair working conditions and union representation on campus since 1995. Their efforts have been met with strong opposition from the university and, in some cases, from the subcontractors hired by the university to manage certain parts of the university's labor force. Despite the challenges USC's workers have faced, and still face in their efforts to ensure that they and their co-workers are treated fairly, they have experienced many victories in their fights for justice.
Image 3: Jonathan Ingalls, “Over 200 union members strike on Jefferson Street Thursday to demonstrate in opposition to ServiceMaster, the university’s custodial contractor,” Photograph, Daily Trojan Vol. CXXIX, No. 66, December 6, 1996. Used with permission.
USC's dining and housing workers, represented by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) Local 11, faced a long and bitter contract fight from 1995-1999 for better pay, benefits, and working conditions, but above all for job security, and thus for prohibiting subcontracting. The contract was eventually won and the workers' situation improved. Currently, those same workers are facing cuts in their hours, and thus in their pay and benefits, as well as harassment and unfair treatment ahead of the next contract fight in 2014.
USC's janitors, before they obtained official representation by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 399, faced a deterioration in working conditions after their jobs were subcontracted through ServiceMaster in 1996. The janitors' 1996-1997 struggle to unionize marked a time in which anyone who agitated for union representation was intimidated, harassed, or unfairly and illegally fired. Later, after the janitors won union representation, their jobs were instead subcontracted through Aramark, with whom the janitors faced a 2009 contract fight for better benefits, including tuition remission.
USC's hospital workers, initially represented by SEIU, decided in 2009 that they would prefer union representation by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), and announced that they would hold a labor union election to facilitate the change. The university used it as an opportunity to rid the workers of union representation altogether, hiring a union-busting firm, the Weissman Group, to persuade workers, via threats or bribes, to vote "no union." Had the university's attempts succeeded, the workers would have faced a potential loss of benefits and job security.
USC’s faculty members have also waged a number of struggles against the administration. The primary problem is that there is no real tradition of faculty governance at USC, there is no autonomous faculty space, and the administration refuses to share key data with faculty – despite its claims of “shared governance.” One of the consequences is a tenure process shrouded in secrecy and capriciousness, a process that is discriminatory toward women and people of color.
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