Washington State University’s Coalition of Academic Student Employees ratified their tentative agreement with administration after going on strike for two hours on all Washington campuses on Jan. 17, 2024.
“Going on strike is an extremely difficult decision to make,” said Ninh Khuu, a Ph.D. student at WSU’s Prosser campus. “But it's something that we were driven to by the administration at WSU who were not giving us enough bargaining dates, not meeting with us and were not moving towards us.”
WSU won and ratified their contract, with 99% of student workers voting yes to the deal, as of 5 p.m. on Jan. 26, 2024. Still, student workers at universities like Oregon State University and Western Washington University are at the bargaining stage with their universities.
During this stage, student workers create contracts and discuss what they would like to be included within their agreements with their universities, said Lexy Aydelotte, a member of Western Academic Workers United.
“We spent months surveying people's priorities and then we spent months doing research and writing contract articles together that address all of the issues that we've identified through surveying and talking to people,” Aydelotte said.
Student workers are categorized into two types at Western: educational or operational. Currently, the educational student workers are the ones bargaining at Western. Universities, however, aren’t legally required to bargain with operational student employees, Aydelotte said.
Operational student employees can sign an authorization card. When the majority of OSE students sign the card, it will authorize Western's representation at United Auto Workers, then the Public Employees Relations Commission will count the cards and approve OSEs’ petition to form a union, according to WAWU’s website. Currently the OSEs have filed for recognition, but there have been no further updates on WAWU’s website as of Feb. 13, 2024.
“During the current session, the state legislature will be considering SB 5895, an authorizing statute related to the collective bargaining rights of certain employees enrolled as students in academic or certificate programs in Washington’s regional colleges and universities,” said Liz Parkes, Western’s associate vice president for human resources, in an email. “Should it pass, WWU will work with the Public Employee Relations Commission and the Office of the Attorney General to ensure compliance with SB 5895.”
SB 5895 is currently in committee in the Senate but will hopefully pass in spring of 2024, Aydelotte said.
“It's the people you run into every day that do your work for you,” Khuu said in regards to who writes the contracts they give to universities about what changes they want made. “We’re the ones writing it.”
Members of WAWU and WSU CASE created their own contracts with the needs for their individual schools in mind, but used each other as a resource to share stories and advice, Aydelotte said.
“We propose wages that are competitive with WSU’s CASE’s campus in Mount Vernon. There's graduate students there who are doing really similar work as us at Western and we think that Western should offer competitive wages. We have similar costs of living, and we're doing similar work, and we want to be in line with that,” Aydelotte said.
WAWU has come to a tentative agreement on nine articles, including the union management committee, recognition and ground rules, according to the WAWU website as of Feb. 13, 2024.
“We're super proud to see what WAWU is doing and Central Washington folks are doing,” Khuu said.
WAWU is working toward ratifying more agreements with Western. The organization meets with Western on Mondays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Viking Union, room 565.
To help WAWU petition for a fully funded WWU, students can add their name to the petition. Any student at Western can sign the petition, even if they're not a student worker.
“The overall advice is rather simple: organize,” Khuu said. “Your power lies in your solidarity as a unit and your ability to mobilize the overwhelming majority of your membership in collective action.”
Courtney Sipila (she/her) is a campus life reporter for The Front this quarter. She is a second-year visual journalism/marketing major. Outside of reporting on the people of Western, Courtney enjoys playing soccer, video games, and watching movies. You can reach her at courtneysipila.thefront@gmail.com.
