MINNEAPOLIS — After holding a weeks-long vote, service workers at the University of Minnesota have voted to authorize a strike and will file its notice Tuesday morning.
The Teamsters 230 union, which represents about 1,500 service workers at the university, voted to authorize a strike by a margin of 93%, according to Brian Aldes, the vice president of the union.
During a press conference Monday afternoon, Aldez said the university made a last-best-final offer on Thursday, which included an 8% pay increase. However, Aldes said most of the union service workers would only see an increase of less than 4%, which he said won't help when people are making poverty wages.
"Unfortunately, the University of Minnesota, apparently, their priority is to continue to perpetuate the poverty that they create by their low wages. They have yet to meet the union's priorities in negotiations," Aldes said.
Teamsters 230 is pushing for a $20 minimum wage, and, according to Aldes, 62% of current and former union workers at the university reported not being able to meet their monthly basic living expenses. Union members currently start at less than $16 an hour.
Aldes emphasized the university's massive salaries for administrators, saying, "I think they just gave Joan Gabel, in recent history, greater than $200,000 pay raise, you know, spread the wealth a little bit."
In December 2021, the university's Board of Regents proposed a pay raise for Gabel, upping her total contract for the current fiscal year to about $1.08 million.
Three union members also spoke alongside Aldes, each of them sharing their perspectives on how the university is paying them poverty wages and paying temp workers more than them.
Mick Kelly, who has been a cook for the university's dining services for 20 years, said there are employees who only make about $17 an hour after working for the school for 25 years.
"Today is an important day for us," he said. "We intend to end poverty wages at the University of Minnesota. when we talk about poverty wages, it's not a rhetorical device, it's a fact that we're living right now at the University of Minnesota."
"We have members who are homeless," Kelly added.
Aldes explained that he hopes for both the union and university to return to the negotiating table in good faith during the ten-day cooling-off period before the strike begins. However, if a deal isn't struck, he wouldn't say how long the strike would be.
If the teamsters do strike, it would be the union's first strike at the university, according to Aldes. "Well, hopefully, it's over before the snow flies," he said at the end of Monday's press conference.
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