By SUSAN JONES
On June 28, members of the Staff Union of Pitt organizing committee filed an unfair practice charge against the University with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board and hand-delivered the complaint to Chancellor Patrick Gallagher’s office.
The charge, filed with help from the United Steelworkers, alleges that Pitt’s administration broke the law over the past few months by:
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Holding mandatory meetings to discuss the union with staff that the union says are rank and file employees or first-line supervisors, who have a right to organize under Public Employe Relations Act, and spreading an anti-union message at these meetings
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Misclassifying workers as managers and telling them they did not have the right to unionize under Pennsylvania law.
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Urging employees to report their coworkers' organizing activity to the University administration, and to respond to fellow employees’ questions about the union with an anti-union message
A Pitt spokesman said, “The University of Pittsburgh has received the documentation from the United Steelworkers and is in the process of reviewing it.”
The fledgling staff union filed with the PLRB on June 5 to hold an election on whether to form a union represented by the USW. The union effort, which would include staff from all Pitt’s campuses, was first announced in September 2021.
The union needs signatures from at least 30 percent of eligible staff to request an election. But the question of who is eligible to be part of the bargaining union is already proving a contentious one, as it was when the Union of Pitt Faculty was forming. Pitt has approximately 8,000 staff members. Of those, around 800 are already represented by separate unions. The PLRB must determine who among the rest are in the bargaining unit.
The union alleges these “captive audience meetings” over Zoom took place from mid-April through at least the end of May, and that approximately two to three dozen people were at each, including the University’s inside and outside counsel, who conducted the meetings.
"It’s disheartening to see the administration of a top university, and my alma mater, choose to so blatantly disrespect its workers by forcing them to sit through anti-union meetings,” Kaitlyn Wittig Menguc, who works as a standardized patient in the School of Medicine and is part of the union organizing committee, said in a news release from the USW. “Our union would help lift the whole university system up — not just in Pittsburgh, but across Pitt’s five campuses. The administration should support that.”
USW District 10 Director Bernie Hall called on University officials to remain neutral and stop interfering with workers’ legal rights to form a union.
James Gallaher, vice chancellor for human resources, said in a statement after the union filed for an election: “We have a long history of working effectively with unions and respect the right of our employees to decide whether or not to choose a union. We strongly believe that the University of Pittsburgh provides an excellent workplace and is guided by a foundational model of shared governance, which is predicated on input from all constituents, including our staff.”
Chancellor-elect Joan Gabel, who starts at Pitt on July 17, said during a news conference the day her selection was announced in April that unionization “is happening on almost every university campus in one way or another around the country.”
She said she is a big believer in shared governance, “And I think that the stakeholders and constituencies and shared governance should be able to come to the table, so to speak, in whatever form and with whatever voice they choose, and then our job as the administration and in the governance is to meet people where they are.”
Both the union (pittstaffunion.org) and the University (staffunionization.pitt.edu) have produced websites that answer frequently asked questions.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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