By MARTY LEVINE
This fall’s balloting on whether Pitt staff should form a union with the United Steelworkers isn’t the first time University staff members have voted on whether to join a union.
On Nov. 11, 1975, the University Times reported that Pitt administrators and the Pittsburgh Support Personnel Association (a labor union that went by UPSPA) were working to determine the bargaining unit — the eligible employees — for a staff union election.
UPSPA was part of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), and claimed that they already had more than 50 percent of signed union cards from Pitt staff — 1,300 “clerical, secretarial and similar non-professional positions, such as postal workers and research support personnel” on all campuses. Pitt was intent on leaving out of the bargaining unit “all supervisory, managerial and confidential employees.”
Almost immediately, the administration stopped talking to representatives of the Staff Advisory Board, or SAB — the predecessor to Staff Council — because, an administration representative said, state law dictates that “the administration can’t meet with one group (SAB) as long as another (UPSPA) claims to represent the staff.”
It had not helped, apparently, that, “Although several SAB officers did investigate affiliation with a union or forming one themselves,” the UTimes reported, “in the end they decided to remain neutral.”
Even before the next step could be taken toward a staff union — a pre-election conference between Pitt, UPSPA and the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board — another union was trying to get in on the action: the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (part of the AFL-CIO).
The University successfully delayed the pre-election conference. “As an employer,” the UTimes reported then, “the University has held to the position that unions are not compatible with an academic environment.”
Despite that, faculty were already set to vote on their own possible union. In fact there were three unions vying to represent faculty back in 1975: the American Association of University Professors, the Pitt Professional Union and the PSEA.
The first faculty union election resulted in a runoff that April between representation by the Pitt Professional Union or no representation at all. The latter choice won by almost two thirds of the vote.
Finally in May 1976, members of the staff bargaining unit, which now numbered 1,800, voted on whether to join UPSPA, AFSCME or have no union.
More than 86 percent of eligible staff voted in the election and around 69 percent selected the no-union choice.
The head of UPSPA accused Pitt’s administration “of intimidating employees into voting against unionization through memorandums during the last two weeks of the campaign,” and filed an official complaint with the state — then withdrew it so that a new union election could be attempted in the future, it said.
The University countered that it had “conducted its informational campaign within the guidelines” of state law, but added that Pitt “recognizes that the problems and concerns of all staff members must be dealt with effectively.”
Meanwhile, the Staff Advisory Board was floundering. At the time it was not as independent of the administration as the Faculty Senate was then or Staff Council is today, and without administrative participation it had started cancelling meetings and talking about a reorganization.
The administration resumed talking to the SAB six months after first withdrawing its participation, but it was too late. The SAB had began a long process of “rewriting itself,” the UTimes reported, to create new bylaws (requiring the Pitt chancellor’s signature) to “make SAB look more like the Faculty Senate. … The bylaws will give SAB a greater advise and consent role in personnel policy making …”
By the next year, Pitt’s human resources department had started a version of compensation modernization, complete with reassigned job classifications and new pay grades “designed to make the University more competitive with area businesses and industry,” the head of HR said.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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