Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon paid all faculty and non-unionized staff $1,500 to compensate for inflation. This was offered once before in 2022, making this the second installation of the payment. The Organizing Committee is collecting signatures for a petition to extend this grant to all Carnegie Mellon workers.
Philip Sink, a member of the committee and a graduate student, explained that this is “an inequity across how the staff are being treated as not all staff received this payment. We took a fairly serious objection to that and think that it is very important that the university needs to recognize that everyone who works for them needs to be treated the same way.”
He explained that this was why the Organizing Committee — which fights for fair pay for unionized workers, graduate students, and undergraduate workers — was founded. “Anyone who works for the university should receive this,” Sink said of the payment.
Alex Tabor, another committee member and graduate student, told The Tartan the history of the petition. The ability to unionize private university workers became a privilege in 2016, though efforts following that eligibility were futile. When Tabor first arrived on campus in 2019, he found that there were many failed attempts to unionize graduate students in order to address several issues.
Tabor added, “I found that interesting and wondered why a bigger effort had not ever taken root. I quickly realized the scale of the University was too much for myself and thought maybe I should start with where I live: with my department.”
Things quickly turned around for graduate students when Emma Folts, writer for Public Source, interviewed a handful of graduate workers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, writing a piece focusing on the inequity and issues they faced. This connected Tabor with other workers facing the same issues, which ultimately led to the founding of the Organizing Committee.
“That was really exciting and enlivening because it has often been a run around and rebuff,” Tabor said. This is when it was decided that it was necessary to work together, regardless of major, regardless of college. “That’s kind of where a lot of the glue for this effort came from.”
So far the petition has over 560 signatures, 60 of which Tabor noted came from the most frequent tabling exhibition. Tabor and Sink shared that they are very optimistic in reaching their goal — which is 1,000 signatures — by the end of the month and are hoping they can surpass that and maybe even reach 1,500.
They explained that they table at a variety of different locations across campus, including but not limited to in front of Tepper, the Forbes Bus Stop, and the Wean La Prima. They noted that there are several other spots across campus they have yet to table at and are hoping to in the near future.
“These are the kinds of injustices that aren’t going to be addressed unless campus-wide mobilization happens. Which is what we are trying to show, people have to be willing to come together from all corners of the university,” Sink said.
When asked about any future plans for the committee, Sink shared a powerful sentiment: “We know that there are demands, issues, frustrations, that different students around the university face. We are going to be surveying what those are, trying to get a sense of that and continuing to use the power of us as a community to try and achieve those.”
The petition can be signed at any of their tablings or on the posters hung up campus-wide, as well as through a google form.
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