Steward's Corner: Bargaining Is an Organizing Opportunity

Service and maintenance workers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, won a new contract that eliminates two-tier wages after a two-week strike that ended September 2.

These workers first unionized in 1981, becoming United Auto Workers Local 2300. These early years are the subject of a recent book, Unionizing the Ivory Tower, by Local 2300’s first president, Al Davidoff. In this Steward’s Corner, Davidoff explains how the local opened up the bargaining process and used it as an organizing tool.—Editors

After we won our union, in our first round of bargaining (in 1981) we had a seven-member bargaining committee representing over 1,000 workers. We relied heavily on our UAW rep. Initially they did all the talking. We were too afraid we would say something wrong.

But in subsequent bargaining we made changes based on the belief that the formal bargaining process should be seen as an organizing and leadership development opportunity, not some isolated world where the experts resolved issues.

First we expanded to a 10-person core bargaining team. Second, we made sure that each member of the bargaining committee spoke, starting from the very first session. It was a good way to get the jitters out. Each team member made a short opening statement. They talked about their pride in their work, their families, and specifically what they had to go without because of the low wages.

In addition to their speaking about an issue of particular importance to the departments they represented, we had each bargaining committee member address a broader issue. We wanted to send a message that while we all had issues of specific concern, we were united, all for one, one for all.

SIDEBAR GUARDRAILS

We also developed strict democratic rules about side conversations with management. Employers almost always prefer to avoid the members. Our expectations are too high and our methods too crude for the elite corporate negotiators. They often tried to pull our UAW reps—or me, as the local president—into what management saw as more professional sidebar conversations.

There were times when we could gain some valuable insight into management's thinking in an off-the-record sidebar. But members could grow suspicious, not exactly sure what was happening, fearing “a deal” would be “cut,” or their interests sold out.

The key was to create full transparency and accountability. I took a second rank-and-file leader into any sidebar. And we never agreed to anything in sidebar. Whatever management said was brought back immediately to the group verbatim. We were not interested in shrinking participation; we were determined to expand it.

We constructed a series of bargaining sub-councils so that our eight largest departments had mini-bargaining over issues specific to their work. These issues were both nitty-gritty and wide-ranging—health and safety, proper uniforms and safety shoes, shift differential, and even scheduling.

Often these issues, while small, were the day-to-day annoyances that needed to be heard. Many of these issues would have been lost at the main table or most likely never addressed. This allowed stewards and assorted activists to really confront their own bosses about their interests in a formal way, and we gathered dozens more leaders in the process.

DEEP-FRIED SKUNK

Our 250 dining services members were the source of my favorite bargaining sub-council experience. They had a specific issue regarding health and safety.

They worked on greasy floors all day long, and their shoes would quickly become damaged and dangerously slippery. Some of them would also carry 30- to 50-pound tubs of food or milk dispensers. Many workers had slipped and fallen and several had broken toes from dropping heavy objects.

We had demanded non-slip safety shoes in previous bargaining, but that got nowhere.

One of the dining workers kept mentioning how much her husband hated her work shoes because the greasy coating made them stink after a while. The grease also made the shoes wear out quickly. At one meeting a dining worker said that we ought to make dining management stick their noses right up to one of the old pairs.

Lightbulb! For the next two months leading up to sub-council bargaining all our members saved their old, beat-up, stinky work shoes. When it came time they brought them to our office and we collected 100 pairs in big garbage bags.

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We were all relieved when bargaining came and we could haul them out of our office up to the pristine Cornell conference room. There was a big bargaining table maybe six feet wide. With the help of 20 dining workers, we unloaded the shoes right onto the table. They smelled like deep-fried skunk. Management was gagging, and Cornell's argument that there was no need was blown away.

We won on that issue that year. Henceforth the university would provide a stipend of up to $80 a year for dining workers to obtain a pair of non-slip safety shoes.

‘OPEN NEGOTIATIONS’

We created “open negotiations,” so that any member could attend and sit in with us at a bargaining session. The only requirements were that we needed to know in advance, and we needed to prep them. We made efforts to organize certain sessions on particular topics so that the workers most interested, say, in health and safety, or night shift differential, or pension could come.

Lots of unions have good reasons not to open up the bargaining process to members in this way. What if we show division? What if someone says something not consistent with our position? Despite the risks, our leadership was fundamentally united around the benefit of this controlled open bargaining policy. The result was that instead of seven worker leaders seeing firsthand what management was saying, we had over 100 members cycle through these opportunities.

Workers who attended became mini-organizers for the union. Initially they were perhaps unsure if local leaders were exaggerating management’s bad behavior. After sitting in they would go back to their shops and tell co-workers that management really was trying to keep workers down.

In truth, on the days we had the bigger “crowds” we would often ask management questions to force them to defend their most obnoxious positions.

Management hated this and would complain and lecture me about how unprofessional this was and how it was making it impossible to get to a contract. By then I had learned that the best way to comprehend these complaints was to interpret them as management admitting to us this was getting to them and that we were on the right track.

I didn't worry much about disrupting the bargaining process because by then I had learned that most bargaining is a waste of time. Ninety percent of progress is made in the final days when priorities are forced forward and the two sides have tested each other's ability to generate or tolerate pressure.

Months of tedious bargaining also bottled up some of our best leaders. Instead of organizing and keeping members informed, we would be shut away with management, twiddling our thumbs with no contract in sight. Our leaders needed to remember that they were organizers and not lawyers, so we all took turns going out to meet members before work or on breaks.

EASY ACCESS

We also learned the importance of decisions about where to have bargaining sessions. This itself is a subject for bargaining. Neither side can dictate location dates or times to the other.

Management usually wanted to meet off campus or at the remote edges of its massive university city. Not having distractions, they said, was important.

We wanted to bargain smack dab in the middle of campus. We wanted members to have easy access, and we wanted to make it easy for our bargaining team to get into our workplaces when needed.

We invited our allies too. At certain bargaining sessions we would include students, other campus workers, faculty, community leaders, even elected officials from the city and county. They would form a second or third “ring” behind us at the bargaining table.

Management hated this even more than having our members present, but labor law allows each side to select its bargaining team, and the message to our members and to management was that the whole campus and town community was part of our team. Our whole little world was watching.

Al Davidoff is the former president of UAW Local 2300. He currently works as Director of Organizational and Leadership Development at the Solidarity Center. This article is excerpted from his book Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers’ Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage (Cornell University Press, 2023).