CB Testimonials
Hear from CWA 7799 members on the importance of securing our collective bargaining rights! Click below to view video testimonials, or continue scrolling to read written accounts.
+ Read Angi's story
With the power of collective bargaining, us workers at CU could make demands that build and maintain equity in higher education -- something public universities desperately need. Studies show that unionizing your workplace shrinks racial and gender pay gaps. With collective bargaining, grad workers like myself could take this further by bargaining for dependent care, protections for international workers, a voice in hiring CU leadership, or divestment from prison labor (i.e. slavery). We can consolidate and complement departmental DEI efforts into contract negotiations for the changes that we, the workers, know will make CU more equitable.
+ Read Sam's Story
I immigrated to the US when I was two years old, because my dad started a PhD in the US. My mom and I came here with him. We lived in university housing, and like many international student families, our situation was tight financially. My mom sewed all of my clothes and cut our neighbors' hair to help make ends meet. Not only was the PhD his job, it was our family's only steady source of income.
Now I am doing a PhD myself, also living in university-provided Graduate and Family Housing, and my neighbors are international families that were just like my parents when they immigrated to the US, and many are just as poor as we were. Yet the university continues to avoid giving us regular raises, while annually ratcheting costs and fees associated with living in university housing.
I want a strong Collective Bargaining bill that allows us a wide scope of negotiation, because working and living conditions for PhD students should be better than they were 30 years ago, and yet they're not. We need to be able to negotiate not just pay and benefits, but all of the aspects of our lives that are controlled by the university. For instance, for many of the workers at the university, Graduate and Family Housing is the only affordable housing option in Boulder, yet because it is controlled by the university, it gives our employers enormous leverage over our survival. It is much easier for the university to evict us from Graduate & Family Housing than it is for a normal landlord to evict their tenants. I would love a union contract to stipulate better lease terms, and making it harder for workers to be evicted from university housing.
+ Read Eilex's Story
Collective Bargaining would give me, and so many people, the opportunity to fight as a collective rather than an individual. Individually, I can gain small victories that will better my conditions, but will leave many of my friends and co-workers to be left behind. Union work and the future it can provide through Collective Bargaining offers workers the agency to fight for their needs and their rights. We do the labor, we work together already on a daily basis--it should be us that are able to fight for livable and thriving conditions.
+ Read Vicki's story
Collective bargaining would allow me to actually have a voice when speaking to the University about how inadequate their grad student health insurance plan is. I have a family to support but the current plan does now allow spouses or dependents to be added. This was particularly difficult when my husband lost his job and health insurance for over a year due to the pandemic. A strong collective bargaining bill will give me a voice to ask the University to stop treating its graduate students like children and instead give them the respect that adults with family obligations deserve.
+ Read Burt's Story
Collective bargaining opens routes to reducing inequities Over the last year, we’ve seen more discussion of how COVID has revealed inequities in our society. This is especially clear when it comes to examining how workers have been treated. For example, essential workers who have public-facing responsibilities, like health care providers and grocery workers, have faced significant risk, often without sufficient protective equipment. Even non-public facing workers, like those in meat processing plants, have encountered more health and safety risks than, for example, white collar workers who were able to work at home.
Colorado’s public employees – for example, teachers, school custodians, and mass transit employees -- don’t have sufficient rights to address such risks. All of these types of public employees have been required to deal with the threats of COVID without the ability to join together to negotiate with their employer regarding the terms of the working conditions, including safety and health aspects. And the arrival of COVID has revealed how vulnerable they are to the whims of management. K-12 schools in Colorado faced constant pressure to put students and faculty back in the classrooms – and sometimes did -- often without sufficient protective equipment or the space to adequately ventilate the classrooms. Many families of color faced tough choices about getting to school (whether a family member is a worker at a school, or a parent, or both) and even getting around. For example, in Denver, the Regional Transportation District reduced service, sometimes up to 40 percent.
All of this adds up to people of color adversely affected at disproportionate rates in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) reports that Black residents account for 6.5 percent of COVID-related deaths, while being only four percent of the population. For Hispanics in Colorado, CDPHE data reveals an even worse picture: they make up 22 percent of the population, but account for 38 percent of the deaths.
There is a systemic way to start reversing such inequities: allow public employees the right to voluntarily collectively bargain in Colorado. Collective bargaining allows workers, who have joined together through a union, to push for improvements in working conditions and better health and safety laws, including enhanced paid sick leave. Moreover, collective bargaining can be a source for stability, especially when a crisis like COVID hits. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), COVID led to disproportionate job losses for people of color – while about 13 percent of White workers lost jobs, 16 percent of Black workers lost their jobs, as did almost 17 percent of Hispanic workers. Meanwhile, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of workers represented by a union went up 0.5 percent – mainly most because most of the existing unionized workers kept their jobs in the midst of huge nationwide unemployment jumps. On top of that, collective bargaining allows workers to push for better pay. And the results are heartening. The EPI reports that Black and Hispanic workers see tangible results. Black workers are paid almost 14 percent higher than their non-union peers; Hispanic workers are paid 20 percent more than their non-union counterparts.
Numbers tell only part of the story. The rest is this – collective bargaining allows for public employees to work together against inequities not only for themselves, but for all workers. Reach out to your state congressman and senator and ask them to support the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Bill. Because workers, and those they serve, are worth it.
