How could a union help us to improve conditions at OUP?
Unionization will give us a collective voice at Oxford. Right now, our employer can change our job descriptions, pay, benefits, or schedules at any time without notice. They can also terminate us without cause or explanation, and they can restructure departments at will, farming out our work to third-party vendors, creating, in their terminology, redundancies. Our union will collectively bargain with OUP with the goal of establishing a legally binding contract that spells out working conditions by which the organization must abide. A union at Oxford University Press will help create a more sustainable, productive workplace in which employees have a say in improving the organization and their quality of life at work and as a whole.
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What protections do we have in this process of unionization? Can an organization retaliate against its employees for participating in a union drive?
The federal government gives us the right to create unions to advance our collective goals and prohibits employers from discrimination or retaliation against us for doing so. We are forming a union to sustain the legacy of OUP by ensuring that we all have a voice, and this is a federally protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act.
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What is a union? What is collective bargaining?
A union is formed when a group of workers organize together to collectively bargain the terms of their employment with their employer. Collective bargaining is the process of negotiating those terms into a legally binding contract. Those terms include pay, health care, pensions and other benefits, hours, leave, and more. Anything that affects employees’ working conditions can be negotiated into a collective bargaining agreement. As members of the union, we will jointly decide our contract priorities in a fully participatory, democratic process.
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Who will belong to the Oxford University Press Guild?
American labor law gives all workers except supervisors, contractors, interns, and confidential employees the right to collectively bargain working conditions through their unions. Our union will include everyone across all departments within the New York office; everyone will have a voice in our shared vision.
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Who are we organizing with?
The NewsGuild-CWA, which has more than 85 years of experience fighting for better working conditions for media professionals and non-profit staff. As part of the Communications Workers of America, TNG belongs to a powerful network of more than 700,000 members.
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I was told that when the union is voted in, I won’t be able to take issues directly to management without going to the Guild first. Is this true?
Absolutely not. The Guild will only help you talk to management if you ask for help. Once you and your co-workers elect shop stewards, who are your own colleagues, you can choose to have them sit in on meetings with management for support. If you prefer to discuss matters on your own, you’re absolutely free to do so, and you’ll have additional rights and protections as a union member.
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Can our union address issues of diversity and inclusion?
Yes. The union can provide us with a mechanism to ensure equal distribution of resources and to hold management accountable for making the changes they promise. With a transparent bargaining structure, we will work so that we all have the opportunity to make a fair wage, have access to professional benefits, and grow in our careers. We’ll also be able to prioritize diversity in the hiring process as one of our bargaining objectives, and a union at OUP will also give us a better opportunity to have influence over the authors and subjects on which OUP chooses to publish
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OUP management is rolling out initiatives which they say will address some of the issues we face. Should we give them more time?
Management may offer to fix one-off problems and promise to address workplace issues, whether through HR or with other initiatives. Forming a union is not about resolving one or two disputes. It is about using our collective voice to correct the imbalance of power that enables these issues to exist in the first place. Management could give in to concessions without a union, only to restructure elsewhere, affecting other departments down the road. A union contract will prevent such illusory gains because management would be legally required to adhere to the mutually agreed terms of our collective bargaining agreement, which typically are in force for three years or more.
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How will a union affect my relationship with my supervisor?
Many employers try to scare employees by painting a union as a third party that will prevent working with supportive managers. That is not true. Our union will not stand in the way of things like providing flexible schedules or negotiating for individual raises. What we will do is establish baseline standards that OUP must adhere to for everyone, which we believe will only improve relationships with management. When disagreements and conflicts do arise, our union contract will ensure job security, enforce accountability, and provide structures through which we can resolve issues.
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I’ve heard that union dues can be expensive. It’s hard enough working in NYC on my current salary. Won’t paying dues just make it harder?
This is a very common question, and spreading concern about dues is actually a common anti-union tactic. Union dues rates are set democratically by membership in each local; ours will be approximately 1.6% of our salaries, which we would only contribute after we are already enjoying the benefits of our contract. Studies consistently show that union workers earn higher pay and better benefits than nonunion workers, which benefits the rest of the economy and results in better average compensation for workers overall (see Economic Policy Institute, “Union decline lowers wages of nonunion workers” (2016), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/union-decline-lowers-wages-of-nonunion-workers-the-overlooked-reason-why-wages-are-stuck-and-inequality-is-growing/). Because OUP is among the world’s largest academic publishers, we also hope that our unionization will contribute to a movement advancing much-needed improvements throughout the publishing industry, especially in the non-profit sector.
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This sounds like a lot of work, how much time does it take up?
We share the work as a collective, and there are many ways, big and small, in which you can contribute. Talk to an organizing committee member to find out how you can get involved. Remember that investing time into building our union is time invested in improving your own life and the lives of your colleagues.