Columbia community members gathered in Speakers Circle Friday afternoon for a rally hosted by LiUNA Local 955, the service and maintenance workers’ union that covers Missouri, and Mizzou Students for Justice in Palestine. Representatives from both organizations demanded improvements for Mizzou’s service and maintenance working conditions as well as reinvestment of financial resources into the student population.
Andrew Hutchinson, the union representative for LiUNA Local 955, said LiUNA wants the university to raise workers’ wages to $19 an hour and improve longevity raises.
According to Hutchinson, the union is currently in wage negotiations with the university.
“We had our first meeting about a week ago, and we’re waiting on their responses to our initial wage proposals,” Hutchinson said. “Our hope is that the community sees that these essential workers are the folks who get up before any of us are up.’
“They clean the university, they cook the food, they take care of the grounds, they even keep the electricity and water flowing so that students can learn, live, eat and research can happen here at the university. It’s incredibly important, the work that they do,” he added.
MSJP, meanwhile, demanded the university divest from weapons manufacturers and reinvest in students. In a speech, MSJP President Sahar Bhutto and member Grace Konrad said that Mizzou’s investments into companies like BAE Systems, GE Aerospace and AeroVironment are valued at $26 million this year, citing budget documentation they had obtained from LiUNA.
“These war companies, they are not partnered with our school,” Konrad said. “They are not giving educational opportunities to students. They’ve got no reason to receive funding or investment from Mizzou.”
Bhutto and Konrad stated the university should stop supporting the defense industry and instead invest in Mizzou students — specifically the multicultural student organizations, which were recently defunded. As an umbrella organization of Four Front, MSJP was also impacted by the defunding.
“The fact that (Mizzou has) $26 million in (war manufacturing) investments and they can’t help our workers and they’re taking away all the money from minority student orgs is so disappointing and disgusting, and I wanted to make sure that, with this partnership, we can show that it is the same fight that we’re in together,” Bhutto said.
LiUNA 955 also brought attention to Mizzou library workers, who are seeking to unionize. Elections for the union began on May 4.
Billy Bascom, a library information specialist, talked about staffing issues at Ellis Library. According to Bascom, library administration has added more hours to the circulation staff’s workload without hiring new workers, thus stretching the team thin, especially during the extended hours of last semester’s final season.
Meanwhile, library security faced a large staffing cut and became stationed in their office instead of at every entrance. Library circulation staff were then required to take active shooter training with MUPD.
“In this training, the entire staff voiced their fears with MUPD, and I asked, ‘But at the west desk, there is nowhere for us to run. What do we do?’” Bascom said. “And the MUPD officer replied, ‘Well, maybe you’re not the target.’”
Vera Elwood, the Ward Two council member for the City of Columbia, spoke about the poor working conditions she and her colleagues experienced when she worked as an information specialist for Mizzou. In this position, she helped organize the campaign that drafted the bill for the unionization of Mizzou librarians.
“The university (administration) forgets who actually makes Mizzou,” Elwood said in her speech. “Because our workers make Mizzou … Our students and our student organizations, no matter what Mizzou says, make Mizzou. We make Mizzou, and so we must stand together and show them today.”
