This past weekend, members of the Service Employees International Union Local 200 (SEIU) met with Hamilton students regarding the ongoing contract dispute between SEIU and the College. Shelley Ceravolo, Member Strength Director for SEIU, started the meeting by saying, “We’ve hit a wall, and we need your help.”
SEIU represents about 120 Hamilton custodial, grounds, and skilled trade workers. All of them have been working without a contract since it expired on Jul. 15, 2018. Three months before the contract ended, SEIU sent potential negotiation dates to the administration, who responded in June.
“One of the meetings was held at the end of July,” said Steve Stemkowski, Director of Human Resources for Hamilton College and a part of the negotiating committee. “We asked the union for dates they could negotiate again, and they didn’t give us a date until the end of August.”
Since the contract ended, there have only been seven negotiating sessions. SEIU claims that the administration, contrary to past practices, now only negotiates between 4 and 6 PM and meets for no longer than 45 minutes. “There have been times where we’ve been there to 8 or 9 [PM] […] we represent 25 colleges, and Hamilton is one of the only schools that [limits bargaining time],” says Ceravolo.
Stemkowski disagrees and says that the union asked to start negotiations earlier or later in the day. “We go into the meetings with the understanding that we’re scheduled for two hours,” he said. “But if it feels like we’re moving along or making progress, or we may need a little more time to talk about things to continue to make progress, it’s clear that both sides would ordinarily ask ‘do you want to extend this evening’s negotiation?’ And that has happened a couple times this year.”
SEIU says it has presented fifteen proposals to the school administration, fourteen of which have been rejected. The only one that has been accepted is one that states Hamilton employees no longer have to pay to see their personnel files.
Some of the union’s other main proposals include strengthening contract language to change Hamilton from an open shop, to a closed one. In a closed shop, someone would have to join the union as a requirement to be hired at an institution.
They also want to create a system that says when the College wants to change a job description, they have to get approval from the union before the change takes place. There would be a similar process for when the college is looking to subcontract to outside companies.
Along with those proposals, the union is also looking to institute an apprenticeship program to help with upward mobility. According to Ceravolo: “Most of the time, they [the College] hire friends and relatives.”
Mr. Stemkowski disagrees. “If you look back at the last 14 years or so, we’ve promoted about 17 employees within the union and we’ve moved and promoted 4 bargaining union employees into the staff and administrative ranks. The idea here is that when jobs do become available — upward mobility, promotional type opportunities — we’re always considering internal candidates and in many cases there’s only one opportunity, and we see a lot of good candidates. We hope that people don’t get discouraged, and they continue to be interested in upward mobility.”
While union members want to dis- cuss these proposals, they feel frustrated with how the negotiating process is going. “It’s not even a negotiation. They go into a private meeting, then they come out and say ‘when do you want to meet next?’” says Ceravolo. “We’ve asked the administration to expand the hours of negotiations so we can have more productive sessions, but they’ve said no.”
“I see it as a two-way street, they’ve caucused as much as we have because we’ve presented both economic and non-economic items,” said Stemkowski. “So it takes time to sort through some of these things, and there have been plenty of opportunities where they’ve taken a fair amount of time, and then ended the negotiations by saying we have to schedule another day.
Workers have also reported various problems in the workplace. They feel like there is a lack of communication from the administration’s side and that they aren’t given autonomy to do their jobs.
“Apparently there was a worker who was on vacation during the Norovirus outbreak and wasn’t told about it,” said, a member of the SEIU, who agreed to speak under the alias of Craig. “He only found out about it when he got back to campus.”
The administration recently mandated that for all eight hours of their work days, custodians must be wearing safety glasses and steel-toed boots. Few custodians work with chemicals for their full work days and many find the glasses and boots uncomfortable. The administration got rid of the boot requirement for custodians, according to Craig, these unnecessary requirements have led “a lot of people [to] feel that morale has gone down.”
Similarly, there was a recent change within the Custodial and Grounds Department as to who is responsible for picking up garbage. Previously, grounds workers were supposed to pick up trash. Under this new change, it’s now the custodians’ responsibility. Custodians were not consulted until after the changes had been made.
Although workers are opposed to this and other problems within the workplace, they are afraid to speak up. Workers have reported various instances of retaliation when someone has decided to speak against the administration.
“They’re great in pointing out our flaws, but don’t like it when we do it to them,” says Kyla, another member of the SEIU who agreed to speak to us under condition of anonymity. “If they don’t like you, they will use their power against you.”
“We do have a philosophy of encouraging employees to make constructive suggestions,” says Karen Leach, Vice President for Administration and Finance for Hamilton College. “There is a regular labor management meeting where employees can bring whatever concerns they have to their supervisors, as well as other opportunities for people to give us input in a constructive way.”
Stemkowski agrees. “As an institution we have zero-tolerance for retaliation,” he said. “I can sometimes understand why people might feel that way, but the institution is really committed to making sure those things don’t happen.”
With unproductive negotiations, some members of the union thinks that the school is not as committed to them as they are to other aspects of the College’s operation. “There’s no respect [for] union members. The school would love to break the union if they could,” said a member of the SEIU who asked to remain anonymous.
The College has recently hired Raymond Pascucci from Bond, Schoeneck, and King Attorneys to serve as counsel during the negotiations. On his website, it says Pascucci was “named as one of the Top One Hundred Labor Lawyers in America by the Labor Relations Institute, a national organization that provides comprehensive support to employers facing union organizing drives.”
“I’ve worked against him in several cases,” added Ceravolo. “He is a union-breaking lawyer.”
“We don’t have internal counsel so we hire Bond, Schoeneck, & King Attorneys for different things depending on their expertise,” says Leach.
Stemkowski reiterated Leach’s point. “I see Ray as a professional and is well-versed in the laws around what you can and can’t do in the union environment, and he provides good guidance to us in helping to achieve contracts that make sense for both parties,” he added.
The union has now turned to Hamilton students to try to get the ad- ministration to budge in negotiations. Ceravolo stressed that, “We need to let students know what’s going on.”
Her message seems to have caught the attention of Ben Rhind ’19, President of the Hamilton Democrats and a member of Student Assembly. “The staff works hard to make this com- munity a better place to live in, and in turn they deserve to be treated with mutual respect from students and the administration.
“Hamilton is more than capable of providing fair pay for the facilities staff, and I’m certain that Hamilton students would rather see their tuition dollars go towards providing good jobs for members in our community rather than paying the bills of union- busting lawyers.”
Alex Black ’19, another student present at the meeting, said he sympathized with the union because he worked in the Root Glen over the summer with Facilities Management. “In two months, I just saw how poor the lack of communication, and lack of autonomy given to workers was,” said Black.
The next negotiation meeting is scheduled for Oct. 11 from 4–6 PM.
“Honestly,” said a third union member who agreed to speak under the condition of anonymity, “I get more respect and communication from the students than from the management.”
