Friday Update: Cornell-UAW Negotiations

August 23, 2024

Dear Ithaca campus community,

With the approaching weekend and Monday’s start of the new academic year, we write to provide you with an update on the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike, some important operational adjustments we are making for the coming week, and to make clear our continued desire to negotiate in good faith with our UAW employees over a new labor contract.

We want to first express our gratitude to many of you who have stepped up this week to fill the operational gaps caused by the strike. While we firmly acknowledge the UAW’s right to strike, we commend the commitment and selfless efforts of employees who are choosing to support the essential needs of our students, staff, and faculty at this difficult time.

Status of Negotiations

This past Wednesday, the University wrote to local and regional UAW leaders to again ask that the union consider using a mediator, or other conflict resolution process, to assist us in reaching a mutual resolution of this negotiation. A mediator would not impose an agreement on either party. The mediator would provide a different perspective and additional opportunities for the parties to reach agreement. We have made this request repeatedly since June 28, making clear our willingness to use a mediator of the UAW’s own choosing. The union continues to reject this approach, believing that the parties can successfully negotiate a contract without this additional assistance. However, our recent negotiations have made limited progress despite the university’s willingness to move toward addressing the UAW priorities.

The University, in its Wednesday letter, recommitted itself to continued negotiations and restructured its wage offer based on UAW’s stated conditions to eliminate the tiers whereby UAW employees who have been in their jobs longer earn a higher wage than more junior workers in the same job. Despite our concern that this structure would fail to reward our longest serving employees, in the interest of continued negotiations we offered a new tier-less wage proposal on Thursday that also increased the total financial terms of our offer. 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.

We are disappointed that the University’s continued efforts to respond to stated priorities and reach a compromise do not appear to be moving the parties closer to a fair contract that fairly compensates our valued and lowest paid employees while balancing the interests of all of our employees, controlling housing, dining, and other costs for our students, and continuing our ability to fund financial aid for “any person” through our need blind/meet full need admissions policy. 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. To be clear, we remain committed to good-faith bargaining, but that requires a similar commitment on the part of the UAW.

Adjustments to Operations

We are working hard to mitigate the strike-related impacts to our dining, building care and other operations. With classes starting Monday and staffing levels lower than normal, we ask that you allow us to focus efforts on the needs of our students and live-in community. We appreciate your understanding, cooperation, and patience as we navigate these challenges together. Specifically: