Pitt staff votes to unionize, plans to begin bargaining with university in coming months

On Friday, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board announced the majority of Pitt staff members voted in favor of joining a union. The Pitt Staff Union will now have two bargaining units — one for professional staff and another for nonprofessional staff. 

“This win belongs to every staff member who stood together for a stronger, more inclusive Pitt,” United Steelworkers District 10 Director Bernie Hall said in a statement from USW. “When workers have a voice, the entire university thrives — from the classrooms to the community that calls it home.”

About 6,300 Pitt staff members will join the United Steelworkers union and begin bargaining with the University administration in the next few months. This new union will cover all staff at Pitt who do not qualify as “faculty.”

The University administration said it has committed to “providing our staff and the Pitt community with current information” throughout the upcoming bargaining process. 

“We have always maintained that this was a decision for staff to make,” the University said in a response to the staff union election results. “The University remains committed to maintaining an environment where all staff can thrive professionally.”

Emilee Ruhland, a staff union organizer and global communications strategist in the UCIS, said the unionization is “a victory for the whole campus community.”

“[The union] is us, the workers, and we need to make sure that as many people as possible have their voice heard and what they want to be talking about at the table,” Ruhland said. 

According to Ruhland, the staff union has been organizing for seven years and filed for an election with the PLRB last year. Now, one year later, they said there has been a lot of excitement from staff union members surrounding the election, which began officially on Aug. 15. 

“What I’m hearing is that people just, first and foremost, want that voice at the table. We want to be heard, and we don’t want these decisions to be made unilaterally, over our own heads,” Ruhland said.