BU, Union Avert Strike with New Contract
The deal: 10 percent raise over four years
BU maintenance workers, who are responsible for the upkeep of campus grounds and 300 buildings, have reached a new contract with the University. Photo by Cydney Scott
BU and the union representing service and maintenance employees tentatively agreed to a new contract Thursday, averting a threatened strike.
University custodians, maintenance workers, skilled trades workers, and mail employees will vote next week on whether to ratify the deal, which would provide a 10 percent raise over the contract’s four-year life. Union negotiators withdrew an earlier demand that BU freeze workers’ contributions to their health insurance premiums, now averaging $400 a month. That demand and a disagreement over raises led the employees to authorize a strike if the two sides couldn’t ink a deal by midnight on October 31, when the current contract was due to expire.
Negotiators were at the bargaining table until about 10:30 Thursday night. “Our goal was to get a fair and equitable contract for both staff and the University. And we collectively achieved our goal,” says Diane Tucker, BU’s chief human resources officer.
Juditra Burgess, the University’s labor relations director, calls the agreement “balanced for the University and employees,” and, she says, “it also reflects the respect we have for our employees.”
“We are proud to say that the hardworking men and women who make BU strong have a strong contract on the table,” says Roxana Rivera, New England district director of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents the workers. “In a city that is becoming increasingly unequal, this contract will keep 700 workers strongly in the middle class.”
With 145,000 members nationally, Local 32BJ is the largest property services union in the nation. Its BU members maintain the grounds and 300 buildings on both the Charles River and Medical Campuses.
BU, which had made preparations in the event of a strike, argued that its workers are among the best paid in their fields when compared with what other Boston-area schools pay. The University also had agreed to share anticipated savings in health costs with the workers. Those savings will accrue, Tucker says, because BU is redesigning its benefits plan to avoid the “Cadillac” tax, beginning in 2018, that the government will levy on health insurance plans it deems too expensive.
While they have been SEIU members since 1951, BU service and maintenance workers are being represented by Local 32BJ for the first time. They have struck only twice during the last 63 years, according to the University.
The union is arranging the ratification vote, which may take place on Monday.
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