Teamsters union representing Penn State employees seeking significant expansion
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- Teamsters Local 8 seeks to expand its Penn State membership up to 10,000 workers
- Union aims to gather 30% support to petition for a formal election process
- Recent contract gains and campus changes fuel broader union interest on campus
Teamsters Local 8, a labor union representing technical service workers at every Penn State campus, is seeking to significantly expand its membership — potentially quintupling it — by organizing some university workers who currently fall outside of its scope.
In other words, the union that represents areas like custodial service, hospitality and food service is hoping to convince workers to join such as staff assistants, engineering support specialists and I.T. employees. About 2,500 tech-service workers across all PSU campuses belong to the Teamsters, while those other workers account for about another 10,000 Penn State jobs.
Teamsters Local 8 held its first information session on the topic Tuesday night at its State College headquarters, a week after the board of trustees voted to close seven commonwealth campuses. Local union President Jon Light cautioned this would be a deliberate process.
“People have very good questions that need answers, and they want to be thorough about this decision,” Light said in a telephone interview. “And we don’t want to rush them to make an impulsive decision. We want them to make the right decision — which we believe this is.”
Ultimately, Light said the goal is to attain the required 30% of signatures from the roughly 10,000 qualified employees. The Teamsters can then file a petition with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, which has to formally approve the union election. If Penn State does not contest anything, a simple majority of voters just needs to vote yes on the union to have all of the new applicable employees become part of the same bargaining unit.
Penn State did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Union membership is not compulsory but, if passed, the union would still be legally empowered to represent all employees in the bargaining unit — regardless of their vote. But, again, such a vote could still be months, or even more than a year, away.
Light said he didn’t have an immediate timetable because the local Teamsters haven’t been down this road in 20 years or more. He was more concerned with getting it done right than getting it done quickly.
“It takes time. But we are working steady and daily on this, and we also have an organizer right now working on everything,” Light added. “And as more people get involved in this process, we’ll start ramping it up.”
Last summer, Teamsters Local 8 negotiated a four-year collective bargaining agreement that included a 20% wage increase over the life of the agreement, additional paid holidays, other changes to assignment of work/schedules, etc. Light believed that agreement, along with other university-wide changes such as the commonwealth campus closures, has more Penn State employees asking questions and demanding better treatment.
A group of Penn State faculty members is seeking potentially unionizing with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 668. About 500 grad students rallied locally in March in favor of a union election. And many employees who didn’t belong to a union before are looking more into the Teamsters.
Light acknowledged the Labor Board could classify some of his targeted workers as “professional,” meaning they might require a second contract separate from the “non-professional” workers. But Light said they’d be willing to do that.
“You can’t take on Penn State by yourself. You can’t,” Light said. “It’s been proven time after time after time. What we did last contract, we proved collectively that 2,500 can take on Penn State and get the best contract this union has ever seen. But it has to be done collectively.”
