ITHACA, N.Y. — As custodians, cooks and food service workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) continue a strike that began on Sunday night, Cornell University has asked its faculty and staff to start bringing their own food and drinks to work, or dine off campus, when classes begin on Monday.
The request appears to signal Cornell is preparing for the strike to extend into next week. Changes in the university’s dining operations were described in a joint statement on Friday from Cornell Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Christine Lovely, Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi, and Interim Provost John Siliciano.
To cope with the effects of the strike, the university’s statement said it will “not be serving hot station meals or customized options at any of our residential dining rooms, cafés, or retail locations during lunch.”
Instead, students will receive boxed to-go lunches between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. as part of their meal plans at specific residential halls, cafes and retail locations. Cornell said it would provide further updates directly to students on Sunday.
Struggling with dining and building maintenance, the university has asked retirees, faculty and staff to cross the UAW’s picket line and pick up shifts. On Thursday, Cornell was forced to close its iconic Dairy Bar, a popular ice cream spot on campus, in order to shift its remaining staff to the main dining halls, according to an email from the university. Just 7 of the 33 eateries operated by Cornell Dining on campus are open, all with reduced offerings, according to the university’s website.
Cornell representatives provided new comments about the status of labor contract negotiations with the UAW, which represents about 1,200 employees at the university. The union’s current contract with Cornell expired on July 1, and negotiations have dragged on since April.
The university has continued to emphasize a desire to bring a mediator into negotiations with the UAW — a request that union representatives have rejected. A mediator does not have the authority to force either party to accept any proposals or offers, but would offer alternatives and compromises at the bargaining table.
In a letter to the editor published by The Cornell Daily Sun on Wednesday, Laurie Johnston, senior director of staff and labor relations in the university’s department of human resources, asked the UAW to consider using a mediator at the bargaining table.
Johnston said in the letter to the editor — which the university shared with The Ithaca Voice and The Sun, but was only published by the latter — that Cornell would “be agreeable” to a mediator of the UAW’s choosing.
Johnston called Cornell’s previously offered agreement to the UAW a “truly record contract” but said the two parties needed to “focus our energy on the considerable differences” between their two wage proposals.
Representatives from Cornell and the UAW last sat down at the bargaining table on Wednesday. During negotiations, Cornell offered to hike wage increases for union members from 16.5% to 19.4% over four years, according to the UAW. A request to confirm Cornell’s most recent wage offer was not answered by university representatives before publication.
The UAW is currently asking for a four-year contract with a 25% increase in wages, which came down from a previous demand of a 45% wage increase over four years.
Johnston called mediation “the most effective next step” to further negotiations between Cornell and the UAW. But UAW representatives don’t believe it’s necessary. They say they’re still negotiating in good faith.
“The reason they want a mediator to be there is to avoid paying the workforce what the workforce deserves. It’s not like the strikers want to be out on strike. They’d rather be at work, and I think that’s very apparent,” said UAW International Representative Lonnie Everett, who has represented the union at the bargaining table.
Everett said that it’s accurate for Cornell to call its offer historic, because “we’ve done things we never did” with the current offer, but he added, “When we say historic and record contract, we’re talking about changing lives.”
Everett said many Cornell employees, who are paid on average about $22 an hour, work second or third jobs to make ends meet. He said Cornell can pay its workforce more than it is willing to, citing the university’s $10 billion endowment and recent years of healthy financial returns.
“They’re not pleading poverty,” Everett said.
In its statement on Friday, university officials said the UAW was offered a proposal that would remove the wage tier system from the contract — one of the union’s core demands. The tier system in the current contract gives workers that started at Cornell before June 30, 1997 a higher pay than employees that started after that date.
Union representatives have criticized tier systems as divisive, saying that it prevents newer employees from reaching the highest wages offered by the university for the positions they work. However, the UAW did not immediately agree to the offer that Cornell put forward.
“The union responded to our positive movement by putting back on the table numerous and costly demands that they had previously agreed to set aside,” Cornell’s Friday statement said.
Everett said removing the tier proposal is “still at play” and that the UAW is negotiating with Cornell to find an arrangement that recognizes seniority in the workforce with higher wages, while also not limiting the wages of newer employees in the long term.
At the moment, it’s unclear when the two parties will meet to negotiate again.
The university’s Friday statement said, “Today, we notified the local UAW leadership that we look forward to returning to the bargaining table when there is an opportunity to make progress on the issues or when the UAW agrees to use a third-party mediator.”