Recycling Workers at Oregon University Join Union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/11771

An unusual group of hourly employees has voted to join a labor union – 'unusual' because the workers are students and their employer is their college. Chris Thomas has more.

Fourteen college students at Portland State University may not have realized what a can of worms they had open when they asked a labor union if they could join. They are hourly workers in the recycling program who voted unanimously to be part of the service employees' union, S-E-I-U. Now the Oregon University system says it won't include the recyclers in current negotiations. Marc Nisenfeld, union president on the P-S-U campus, says while it is unusual for students to want to unionize...they have their reasons.

: "They’re treated differently; they’re paid lower than regular classified workers. They don’t have a grievance process; they don’t have, really, anything. They came to us wanting to organize, mostly to have a say in their - in their work, in the direction of their work."

Nisenfeld says the state Employment Relations Board has already certified the union as the students' bargaining agent, so the union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint. The school says it wants to bargain separately with the recycling workers...not as part of the larger union membership.