Student groups join to rally behind unions

As the conflict between Temple management and union employees continues, members of the Student Labor Action Project are demanding to know about and have a say in the affairs of their school.

A petition circulated last week by members of SLAP demanded that Temple President Ann Weaver Hart hold a public forum on the current state of labor relations at the school.

“We just want transparency,” said Wes Weaver, a junior photography and urban studies major and SLAP leader. “The concern is that the way labor relations are going now is not healthy. They’re overlooking the students.”

A major source of the conflict is that two of the unions working in the school have not been able to work out a contract with the school’s management. One union, the Temple Association of University Professionals, has accused Temple of violating state labor laws through the use of anti-union tactics in negotiations.

“I’m discomforted to know that students don’t know what’s going on on-campus,” said Temple College Democrats President Elizabeth Hanson through a megaphone from the top of the Bell Tower’s steps. “We need this information to be the engaged, active students that we’d hope they’d want us to be.”

Another issue of concern to the students involves AlliedBarton security guards’ paid sick days. Weaver, who has campaigned with SLAP on behalf of the security company since 2007, said it is a common policy for security guards to receive only one paid sick day per year when upon hire they were led to believe they would receive more.

The students’ petition, along with letters written by members of the Temple College Democrats, the Pennsylvania Students Education Association and SLAP, were brought to the office of President Hart Wednesday afternoon after a rally at the Bell Tower.

The rally was predominantly attended by students from the coalition of organizations in support of the unions. Approximately 40 people rallied. Many were carrying signs, some of which depicted a pink elephant, symbolic of the problem of poor labor relations at the school, the students said.

But it was the lack of transparency in the school’s actions that inspired many of the speakers the most.

Temple Student Government Senate President Jeff Dempsey gave a brief speech to the crowd at the rally reiterating the call for more student involvement in the schools affairs.

“Communication is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” he said.

Corey Gochenaur, a junior secondary education major and member of PSEA, said he was concerned that without stable labor relations within this school or others his future livelihood, and that of other aspiring teachers, is threatened.

After the speeches at the Bell Tower the students and other supporters marched to the front of Sullivan Hall, where the petition and letters were given to University Counsel and Senior Vice President George E. Moore, who assured that they would be delivered to Hart, Weaver said.

“We just want to have an open forum,” said Weaver, long after the day’s events ended.

Tim McCullough can be reached at tim.mccullough@temple.edu.

Union workers rally over stalled negotiations

Temple’s professional and technical employees’ union took their complaints to the street on Tuesday, marching and chanting down Broad Street over the insertion of merit pay in their new contract.

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local 1723 were supported by Temple’s faculty union, graduate assistant union and students in Temple’s Student Labor Action Project in the demonstration, which began with a rally at the Bell Tower and ended outside of Conwell Hall.

The union has been deadlocked in negotiations with the Office of Labor Relations since their contract expired at the end of October. The last negotiation session was in January.

AFSCME is demanding that it receive the same benefits of non-bargaining employees, such as increased vacation time and funeral leave. Temple is conditioning the demand with a performance-based pay system to mostly replace the current annual 3 percent across-the-board pay raises.

“This is a time that Temple is doing extremely well. The upper administration is getting big raises and bonuses, and we think that this is a very unfair system that can really lead to a lot of favoritism and can really hurt a lot of people,” AFSCME president Paul Dannenfelser said.

The proposed contract would also gradually increase the percentage that employees pay for family coverage in health care. Currently at 13.5 percent, it would increase to 17 percent after four years.

Art Hochner, president of the faculty union Temple Association of University Professionals, spoke at the rally in support of AFSCME. TAUP experienced similar stalls in its negotiations in 2005 over merit-pay and held a rally which AFSCME members attended in show of their support.

“We think every employee deserves a living wage and no one should go without a pay increase,” Hochner told the crowd. “If they’re good enough to work here, they’re good enough to get a raise.”

The protest took place during the Student Labor Week of Action sponsored by SLAP and Jobs with Justice. The week-long event is mostly a run-up to a demonstration for AlliedBarton guards on Sunday, but it was organized in concert with AFSME’s demonstration.

“We pay obscene amounts of money to the administration for education, thus we have the right to demand justice and equality for our workers,” SLAP President Wes Weaver said. “This university would be nothing without these workers.”

Sharon Boyle, vice president of the Office of Labor Relations for Temple, said she did not immediately have information on how much of the proposed pay-raise system would be based on performance and how much would be guaranteed. But the pay-raises would be more across-the-board in the earlier years of the contract and then gradually move toward merit-pay, she said.

“[AFSCME is] asking for a lot of benefits that are offered to non-bargaining groups, and we’re willing to give them those,” Boyle said. “It’s just the university’s concerns are not being addressed.”

The Office of Human Resources sent a letter to all AFSCME members on March 24 giving a rough outline of the university’s proposed contract. The letter also stated that were a performance-based system in place, “more than 90 percent of the AFSCME bargaining unit would be eligible for base increases greater than the annual across-the-board base increases the university and the union negotiated in the last contract.”

There are currently no more scheduled negotiations. Both Boyle and the letter sent by Human Resources said the university continues to remain open for discussion.

“President [Ann Weaver] Hart should get involved in negotiations,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s time for her to get involved and for her people to come to the table and get an agreement.”

Andrew Thompson can be reached at andrew.thompson@temple.edu.

Activists kick off Student Labor Action Week

Students, labor activists and artists filled a South Philadelphia art studio Friday night for “Voices of the Rebels,” as part of Student Labor Action Week, a week of protests and flier dissemination that will start in earnest on Monday.

Temple Student Labor Action Project and Jobs with Justice will continue their ongoing fight for improving the conditions of AlliedBarton by distributing informational material throughout the week.

Philadelphia hip-hop artists Rev 1 and Son of Nun, high school students from the Philadelphia Student Union and other Temple students also performed at SoulPurl, a hybrid stained glass and collage studio on South Ninth Street.

Caresh Walker, who runs SoulPurl with fellow artist Peter Javian, offered the space to the SLAP at the price of a night’s electricity bill and told them that they are welcome back whenever they like.

This week, students on campus will be offered fliers and handouts by SLAP on the conditions of AlliedBarton workers and other employees of Temple.

On Tuesday, SLAP and JWJ will support the protest of Temple’s professional and technical union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local 1723, which is stalled in its negotiations for a new contract with the university. Temple is trying to institute a merit-based pay system, which would link pay raises to performance.

The week’s capstone event will be on Sunday, when activists and AlliedBarton workers will commemorate the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the birth of Caesar Chavez by marching from Arch Street Methodist Church to a currently undecided location. Organizers are considering marching to either the Kimmel Center, where a theater is named after AlliedBarton’s biggest shareholder, Ron Perelman, or AlliedBarton’s headquarters.

Organizers say that targeting Perelman will inextricably attach his name to the conditions of workers for the first time.

In his day job as an event coordinator for the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Walker frequently comes in contact with AlliedBarton guards.
“I know what they’re going through, and hearing about it sends a chill up my spine,” Walker said.

Jacob Winterstein, a senior geography and urban studies major, performed spoken-word poetry while Philadelphia artist Zack Dean stood next to him, furiously scrawling an image of queued marchers onto a canvas.

“The service economy is the dominant economy is this city, so it’s the most important to unionize,” Winterstein said. “As a Temple student, it’s imperative that I support workers at Temple.”

SLAP and JWJ have tried to unionize AlliedBarton workers since October 2004. Their most recent campaign began in September last year and focused on winning the workers five paid sick days.

Workers instead received a benefit of one sick day per year of full-time employment with a maximum of three sick days, which Fabricio Rodriguez, president of JWJ, called “a PR stunt.”
“They acted like they were cutting us a break, and it was a PR stunt,” said Rodriguez. “We will get everything we want because we are on the side of the angels.”

Andrew Thompson can be reached at andrew.thompson@temple.edu.