By Caro Pirri – Steward, United Steelworkers Local 1511. Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh. Member, HELU Media and Comms Committee
On August 14th, I sat down with Jen Goeckeler-Fried, Chair of the Bargaining Committee for the staff union at Pitt, to talk about her experience with bargaining. We met during a United Steelworkers union happy hour for staff, faculty, and grads at East End Brewing Company in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood. The Pittsburgh Labor Choir was also there, and we got to sing some great solidarity music after! This is a transcript of highlights of our conversation.
35 Years at Pitt, most without a living wage
Caro: Tell me about yourself. What’s your background? How long have you been at Pitt and what sort of work do you do?
Jen: I have been at Pitt for 31 years, or 35 years if you include my time as an undergraduate. I went to Pitt and studied Biology and did undergrad research in a lab in the same department where I now work. When I graduated, my undergrad research advisor introduced me to the faculty member whose lab I have managed for the last 31 years.
Caro: What kind of work do you do in your lab?
Jen: We study how proteins fold. There are about 70 human diseases that are caused when proteins don’t fold correctly, things like cystic fibrosis and also things like the neurodegenerative diseases: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s. And protein folding is intimately related to cancer progression as well. Cancer cells tend to accumulate a lot of misfolded proteins. So, we are studying the basic science behind how proteins fold, as well as the quality control pathways that exist in our cells to deal with protein misfolding, and how we can manipulate those pathways in order to hopefully, eventually cure human diseases.
Caro: That is incredible! What’s a typical day in the lab for you?
Jen: In addition to the research – conducting experiments, growing cells, analyzing the proteins – I’m also the lab manager, so I do the ordering and inventory management for the lab, and I make sure that everyone is trained, that we pass our safety inspections, and remain in compliance with safety regulations.
Caro: And you’re not the PI?
Jen: I am not the PI. I don’t write the grants to get us the money, but I basically do everything else. I participate in lab meetings and journal clubs, and I advise the students in the lab. I usually have some undergrads who work as lab aides who I supervise, and I also help out with some grad workers’ projects through training and advising.
Caro: It sounds like your job touches almost every kind of university work! Teaching, mentoring, research, management, advising. How long have you been involved with the staff union work?
Jen: I was an organizer for 4.5 years, until we won our union. And then I was elected to be the chair of the bargaining committee. And we’ve been bargaining now for a year and a half. So, six years in total.
Caro: You’ve been in it for the long haul. What motivated you to get involved in that work in the first place?
Jen: By the time I first learned about the early organizing efforts for a staff union, I had seen a lot. I had already been at Pitt for 25 years at that point… We are expected to show up and do our jobs to the best of our abilities, but we had no say at all in how our workplace was run and how decisions were made every day that affected us. We had no voice in making those decisions, and I don’t think that’s right. I think that workers should have a say. I had also seen a lot of bad things that I knew needed to be fixed. Things like discrimination, racism, and sexual harassment that were not handled appropriately or were shoved under the rug. People who had a lot of talent and who were good friends of mine left the university because of some of these issues, and I wanted to make sure that that doesn’t happen to anyone else. I thought: with a union, we can try to do something to combat that.
Caro: How did your experience as an undergrad student compare to your current experience in the same lab when union organizing was first starting?
Jen: One thing that’s changed is that I’m interacting with staff across the whole university now. In my capacity as an organizer and now bargaining committee chair, I get to meet a lot of staff, and I get to hear about problems that are happening. That has been eye-opening in a lot of ways – to see the true extent of how deeply we needed to have a union and also how isolated we were from each other before we started organizing. We didn’t really know how people were treated in other departments versus how things were in our little corner of the university… That made it difficult to organize. The early days of organizing also started just before COVID. Then we were even more separated from each other… I had my first organizing conversation with a staff member on Zoom. It was a different time for sure! We didn’t get to meet face-to-face and have any kind of organizing committee meetings in person for quite some time.
Bargaining Challenges
Caro: It’s so important to have the whole person in mind going into bargaining. That’s so much of what bargaining is: asking the administration to see us as people rather than overhead. What are your priorities for you and your colleagues in bargaining?
Jen: We sent out a bargaining survey when we first started, and we have been using that as our guide to set our priorities. And even during the organizing phase, we know that money – salaries and raises – was a top priority for a lot of staff. There are a lot of people in my bargaining unit who have to have a second job. I was one of them for the first 20 years that I worked at Pitt. I had a side job so that I could pay my bills.
Caro: Even with all the work you were doing and all the roles you had in your lab, you still needed a side gig?
Jen: That’s right. And one of those side gigs was babysitting for the professor I worked for in the lab. He paid me so little that I needed to take on other work babysitting for his kids. That irony is not lost on me… After 20 years, I finally got to the point where I’m now making enough to be able to afford to pay for a mortgage, put food on my table, and have a car that functions… And a lot of people don’t reach that point. There are a lot of jobs that are paid even less than research jobs at Pitt, and those folks have no chance of getting to a point where they can afford the things that I have. We need to fix that. That has been our #1 priority. We haven’t started bargaining true economics yet because the university has been really reluctant to bargain over economics with us. They seem to have it in their mind that they want to get through all the non-economic issues first before they’ll start talking economics with us. We’ve actually had to file unfair labor practice charges against them over that, because we don’t think that’s fair or legal for them to be able to say that, since these economic issues are mandatory subjects of bargaining.
Caro: They did something similar during faculty bargaining. It’s always the economic proposals that get pushed to the end, and those are (in most cases) the most important for members. Then there’s this war of attrition.
Jen: It’s been really frustrating because our bargaining unit wants us to get to the economics. But there are respect issues that we need to make sure are covered as well. We’ve already won just cause, which I think is going to be amazing. Because right now, we’re at will, and we’ve seen a lot of people get fired for no reason. And having to follow established procedures for terminating someone – it’s going to be huge. And we’ve already locked in the ability for staff members to have flexible work agreements and get notice if the university intends to change them. Because that’s something that’s meaningful to a lot of employees. I don’t have one because I work in a lab and I can’t do that at home, but I know a lot of people who really value being able to get their work done from a remote location.
Caro: It can be an access need as well… And Pitt’s buildings are not necessarily accessible, especially the Cathedral.
Jen: That’s true, my building is definitely not very accessible. I spent three months in a wheelchair after I had major reconstructive leg surgery, and I couldn’t get around. I had to have people open doors for me constantly, and there were no easy ways to get in and out of the building. It was very inaccessible. I really had a hard time and struggled to just come to work and do any part of my job.
Caro: And then the university is outsourcing meeting your access needs to you and your colleagues, who then have to step up because the university is not.
Jen: That’s right, and at that point, I was basically told that because it was temporary, that I wouldn’t be in a wheelchair forever, that they didn’t need to change anything… They said by the time we get something in place, you’ll be fine.
Jen: We’ve also had a lot of bargaining challenges. We thought that putting the nondiscrimination article on the table early was something we could get done as an early win because the faculty unit already had a really nice nondiscrimination article in their CBA. We took their language, made a couple of small modifications, and put it on the table for ourselves. The university came back and said that they would not have anything in the contract that has “those words” (in quotation marks), meaning the protected classes. So, they told us that they would not agree to anything as long as we wanted to have a list of protected classes… It’s very important to our membership to have that language in the contract. Throughout the course of bargaining, we pointed out to the administration that these words are on their own website and already in the faculty contract, which they agreed to, and that’s a public document that people can access. What is the harm in having them in our contract? But they don’t want to have anything in writing that is recent, and they want to have the flexibility where if federal law changes…
Caro: they can remove protected classes from the list.
Jen: right, which with this federal administration is a very real thing that could happen.
Caro: Which is even more of a reason why you would need them in the contract!
Jen: Exactly.
Caro: You’ve also talked about retaliation that some members have experienced.
Jen: Yes. Some bargaining committee members who taught had their classes reassigned to others. A few of us have received discipline in the form of warning letters for reasons that were not truthful or warranted. These letters mention the potential for termination. And one bargaining committee member was abruptly terminated. We’ve had to file ULPs to deal with this retaliation… Academic freedom has been another challenge. There are a lot of staff who teach and do research. I’m a researcher. When I go to a conference and I give a lecture, I’m speaking as an expert in my field, and we feel that we deserve to have academic freedom protections in our contract. The university was initially negotiating with us over the language in that article, and then one day they came to the table and told us, “we’re not going to talk about this with you anymore. Academic freedom does not apply to staff.”
Caro: Is that still their position?
Jen: That’s still their position. We have not been able to get them to back down from that.
Caro: And of course, with holding off on the economic proposals, there’s time leverage that they have for unreasonable stances like that.
Jen: Yes, they know how important it is, but they know that we need to move on.
Getting involved with HELU
Caro: How did you get involved with HELU?
Jen: I learned about HELU from the Pitt faculty union and started to attend some meetings. I was invited to attend the Northeast Bargaining Summit in Amherst. HELU actually sponsored me so I could go, because we’re still bargaining our first contract and don’t have dues money yet. And it was an amazing experience! I learned so much from my colleagues at other institutions, and I came back with so many ideas and so many contacts. I’ve reached out to so many people since then. I’ve appreciated all of the help and support. HELU also offered to give us support for actions related to the university’s refusal to negotiate the nondiscrimination article. We’re planning something soon! None of us should be bargaining alone, and knowing that this network is out there has just been amazing and so very, very important.
Caro: It’s like a second level of silo breaking, where the union at the university connects you to other departments, and then what HELU is so great at is connecting you to unions at other universities.
Jen: That’s right. And honestly, sharing our struggles with each other helps us try to figure out solutions, and sharing successes and language that people have used in contracts makes my job easier.
Caro: Sharing contract language makes me so happy.
Jen: Exactly!
Caro: It gives you a way of thinking beyond who you think your “peer institutions” are when you’re doing research on contract language. You otherwise would miss out on so much knowledge when you restrict models for contract language to only those universities that you think are most relevant to your situation.
Jen: That’s right, and also the internet is a big place. Searching for higher ed contracts can be overwhelming. Having people who already know what’s in each contract and can direct you to the right place just made my life so much easier.
Caro: For me, on the faculty side, meeting people at the other PA state schools through HELU work has been so important, and understanding our common ground with each other, understanding that we have shared priorities like the PA Promise.
Jen: And you know, funding for higher ed in PA is such a problem. We’re in the bottom three or four in higher ed funding from the state, and we need to change that.
Caro: And being flat-funded impacts everyone. We’ve been flat-funded for so long. It hurts students. It hurts everyone.
Jen: The university also uses it as a reason to cry poor at the bargaining table.
Highlights at the bargaining table
Caro: Have there been any high points for you at the bargaining table? Have there been any moments you look back on as a solidarity moment or a win (without sharing too much information)?
Jen: Being able to get folks raises last year without having to pay the increase in health care costs – which the non-represented staff had to pay – was a highlight for me. Money is such a priority for our bargaining unit members, and it was good to be able to bring them a raise while the negotiations are ongoing.
Caro: Especially with the cost of living. A lot of times, raise offers are technically pay cuts since they’re not inflation-adjusted.
Jen: That’s very true. We see that for those of us who have been at Pitt a long time, we’re losing money every year because our salaries were low to begin with, and our raises are not keeping up with the rate of inflation.
Caro: Yes, you’re creating more value for the university every year, but they’re investing less in you.
Jen: Getting back to the highlights, I also want to talk about the people I met along the way. First of all, having the faculty, grads, and staff all organized with the Steelworkers, we’re sharing a lot with each other. Having that solidarity behind the scenes – working to support each other, to make sure that we’re not stepping on each other’s toes, and that we’re considering the other units when we put forth our proposals – has been really great. And also, just building that worker power. We’re going to have twelve thousand Steelworkers at Pitt, and that’s a lot of bargaining power.
Caro: That’s truly incredible. The university tells us that there are more differences between us than there is common ground, but one of the things that unionization can show you is that the reverse is true.
Jen: We’re all workers. We are all fighting for the same things. We want respect; we want our work to be valued and compensated fairly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a grad worker, a staff member, or faculty – you deserve a safe workplace, you deserve that respect, you deserve to have a say in your working conditions.
Caro: You deserve to be adequately compensated. You deserve to know if you’ll have stable employment.
Jen: You deserve not to be discriminated against! You deserve to have freedom of speech.
Caro: Basic human rights!
Jen: I’ve met the most amazing people in this journey because we’re all fighting for what we believe in. It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. But having these people alongside us gives us energy and power and strength, and building these relationships is the most important thing. I’m going to tear up! Talking about all the amazing people that I’ve met along the way makes me so happy. It’s one thing to talk about wanting a better workplace or talking about wanting a better country or a better situation, but we’re out there every day building it.
Caro: Under these circumstances, what’s been really important for me is that I can materially improve the lives of my colleagues. I can help to create a workplace in which someone doesn’t have to work multiple jobs or doesn’t have to be on food stamps to feed their family. All of those things that seem so hard to change on a grand scale (although they’re not as hard to change as they seem), those are actually things that we can materially change through our union. How awesome is that?
Jen: We’re doing the work. And we’re making a lot of sacrifices along the way. I’ve spent a lot of time doing union work that I could have spent with my family and my friends – although now my union colleagues are some of my best friends. But we do all give up something to do this work.
Caro: Being on the bargaining committee, just the sheer number of hours you spend uncompensated in that room.
Jen: It’s a second full-time job that I’m not compensated for at all.
Caro: So, people, community, and solidarity keep your energy up. What else gives you energy?
Jen: Being able to handle people’s problems. When staff members come to me and say “I’ve got this issue” and I’m able to do something about it, whether we bring it up on the bargaining table and get an answer for someone who has been stuck in an HR loop of hell for six months trying to get a straight answer for someone, or when someone is having an issue with a supervisor and we’re acting as a Weingarten rep and we’re supporting them in a meeting. Being able to make a difference for staff members and help them has been really empowering. Having the rep in the room levels that power dynamic.
Caro: Do you have advice for staff folks at other universities who are thinking of organizing a union?
Jen: Do it, just do it! Have the meetings and have the conversations. Just do it and don’t look back.