FAQ

Dues are 1.7% of gross salary, so the exact amount depends on your compensation. Dues are a function of our contract, so nobody pays any dues until we have successfully organized our union, bargained our first contract, and voted to accept it. It’s unlikely that any of us would vote for a contract that doesn’t at least make paying dues worthwhile.

Sometimes: 

• Supervisors should not discuss our non-supervisory organizing effort at all (even with people they don’t directly supervise) so as to avoid the appearance of influencing or coercing someone’s decision to unionize. 

• Non-supervisors, however, are completely free to discuss supervisory unionizing activities with supervisors. 

These rules are a function of workplace power: supervisors are in a position to use their authority to sway non-supervisors for or against unionizing, but non-supervisors don’t hold similar institutional authority over supervisors.

By signing our membership card, you are saying that you want to be represented by SEIU 925, that you want to help form our union, and that you want to be a member of our union once we have won our contract. You should treat this card as if it were your vote to form our union – because, with card check, it might be! Nobody will know whether you have or have not signed a card, unless you choose to be public with your support. Nobody in Administration will ever see our cards, nor will they be told who signed.

Our supervisors and managers are not the impetus for organizing. Many of us have supervisors whom we respect and like, and who would make the changes we need if they had the power. In fact, by organizing, bargaining better working conditions and pay, and clarifying and standardizing workplace rules and policies, we improve the workplace for all. When we bargain our first contract, we will deal with UW Labor Relations and UW Libraries senior administrators, not our immediate supervisors. 

Besides, not everyone is so lucky. Ultimately, the quality of our working conditions, our experiences at UW Libraries, and our professional satisfaction should not be dependent on a single individual. Everybody at UW Libraries deserves respect.

Librarians and professional staff who do not supervise other librarians or professional staff are eligible to organize together into one bargaining unit. The “first level” of pro staff and librarians who supervise other pro staff or librarians are eligible to organize together in a separate bargaining unit. (See RCW 41.56.021 for exceptions.) 

In the 925 classified staff contract, Limited-term and Project appointments involving bargaining unit work are handled differently. An employee who has a Limited-term appointment becomes eligible to join the union when they have worked 350 hours in a year. An employee who has a 

Project appointment is eligible the entire time of their appointment. This was also agreed to during the discussions around eligibility for the pro staff who organized at the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. It’s reasonable to believe that the same situation would hold in the Libraries. 

If a temporary appointment requires an employee to supervise supervisors of librarians or pro staff, the employee is not eligible to join the union while occupying the temporary position. (Eligibility may change depending on the employee’s position once the temporary appointment has ended.)

A union is a group of workers who have won the legal right to negotiate as a group with their employer over mandatory subjects of bargaining: wages, benefits, and working conditions. The result of negotiations is a legally binding contract that must be followed – and provides a process for recourse if it is not. Uniting together gives us far more power than when we try to deal with our employer as individuals. We can use this power not only to win improvements to our pay and working conditions, but also to reinforce the things we love about our jobs and to help UW Libraries make the improvements that are necessary to better achieve our mission. 

SEIU Local 925 is the largest and most powerful union representing workers at the UW. By joining 925, we will be in solidarity with nearly 7,000 of our classified and faculty colleagues, including many of our classified coworkers; moreover, 925 also represents by far the largest

group of unionized professional staff anywhere at the UW (at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). By joining together with thousands of our colleagues and unionizing with SEIU 925, we will be well-positioned to win the kinds of improvements we need throughout the library system. It makes sense to join with this effective, diverse union.

We are organizing to improve workplace conditions and address workplace concerns, including turnover, work/life imbalance, unclear or nonexistent career pathways, and the lack of an effective way for our voices to be heard. We recognize and deeply appreciate the efforts many of our colleagues have taken through other avenues (such as investigating faculty status for librarians), but we believe that only by forming our union can professional staff and librarians have a true seat at the table when it’s time to make crucial decisions at UW Libraries.

First, a group of coworkers (the Organizing Committee) takes responsibility for informing fellow employees and building majority support for the union. Our colleagues express their support by signing a membership card. Once a sufficient number of our coworkers have signed membership cards, we will file a petition for union recognition with the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC). From that point, there are two potential routes to recognition: (1) a secret ballot election where we would need a simple majority of votes cast in order to win our union; or, (2) a process known as “card check.” With card check, if a solid majority of our potential union members join, PERC will recognize our union without the need for an election. 

Once we have won our union, it will be time to start negotiating our first contract. We will survey everyone in our union to determine our priorities, elect a bargaining team, and begin learning

how to draft proposals for contract language. Experienced union staff will work with us at every step of the process, but only the members of our union will determine what we bargain over, and only we can decide whether or not to accept the contract.

Classified staff are in a completely separate bargaining unit from any of us. Librarians and professional staff who only supervise classified staff will be part of the non-supervisory unit.

Supervisors have the added challenge of frequently being caught between UW Libraries administration and other colleagues. Although supervisors are responsible for ensuring that work gets done, they have little authority to increase staffing or to set expectations or deadlines. As a consequence, supervisors may end up working long hours to make up for the lack of coherent planning, contributing to burnout. By unionizing, supervisors will be able to bargain as a group to help shape the decisions that affect our ability to do our work well.

Most of the time, we will all be bargaining together over the many issues that we face in common. (This is how the classified staff units at the UW manage to have many groups under the same contract.) When issues arise that are unique to one group or the other, we will be able to deal with those issues separately. Imagine a Venn diagram with a very large overlap in the middle and narrow crescents on the edges – that’s what our two bargaining units will look like.

Once we announce our campaign throughout UW Libraries, we hope that you will boldly, proudly, and publicly support our union! When we stand together and make our support for our union visible, we show our colleagues – and UW Administration – that we are united in our campaign and committed to improving UW Libraries through our collective voice. However, this is entirely your choice, and we understand that we all need to make decisions that best fit our individual circumstances.

Depending on your individual comfort level and relationship with your colleagues, you may want to inform eligible colleagues about our activities or invite them to an open meeting. 

The decision to join our union is confidential unless and until you choose to make your support public. 

If you are at all uncertain or uncomfortable, it’s always safe to respond, “I’m not sure what I can say to you about that.” 

It is neither legal nor appropriate for any supervisor or member of management to ask you anything about your support for or opinions about our organizing effort. 

The law requires that we limit any discussion to non-work hours, personal email, personal phones, and other non-UW systems. We have also created a Slack space for discussion amongst ourselves. If you’d like to be added, please let any member of the Organizing Committee know! 

Make sure to discuss confidentiality with your colleagues when you talk about our organizing campaign. We will eventually go public with our campaign – but we will do so strategically, when we believe the timing is right. Most importantly, we want UW Administration and HR to hear about our union when we decide to tell them, and not a moment sooner. Until we announce our campaign publicly, please remind your fellow union supporters to be discreet. Say things like “We would like people to make up their minds without university influence,” and “Confidentiality is of the essence.” 

Gather issues and concerns, and pass them along to the Organizing Committee. We need to know what people’s priorities are! 

We know from past unionizing efforts at the UW that Central Administration will not be pleased at the prospect of librarians and pro staff forming a union, since this would threaten the unilateral control they have over our workplace. The UW’s preferred tactics center on delay and obstruction of the process. It is likely that they will hint that they will halt or interrupt the promotion cycle and then blame our organizing efforts as the cause. Individuals who have put in for pay adjustments may have these processes frozen, depending on where they are in the process. 

Frequently, individual administrators and managers simply do not understand the unionization process, and spread misinformation or violate labor law due to lack of training in the rights of employees to form unions. It is important for all of us to know our rights under the law, and to be prepared to stand together and insist that our rights be respected. 

It’s also important to know that UW Administration cannot legally retaliate against anyone who supports our effort, nor can they interfere or try to discourage us from coming together. They cannot even legally ask us if we support unionizing. Organizing our union does not mean we are anti-management – it simply means that we recognize that we are stronger together, and that we have decided to stand together to improve our workplace.