We have a situation on this campus where the same kind of work is being done side by side by equally capable employees in equally necessary positions. One kind of worker is classified as permanent and therefore is entitled to a higher wage, union representation, job protection and a benefit package including health sick pay and pension that is worth about $4 an hour.
Next to them you have people doing the same work: janitors, kitchen staff, secretaries, DARS encoders and all the permanent work that is necessary for this campus to function.
These employees are classified as Limited Term Employees by the university and are not covered by the state labor relations act and receive nothing but a bare (often very low) salary and can be arbitrarily fired for any reason.
Limited Term Employees are supposed to be doing seasonal work, or work with complex employee employer relations, but many workers across the campus and the state are classified as limited term to save money despite performing the permanent and necessary labor of this campus.
By law they are only permitted to work 1044 hours as an LTE, but many are reclassified and kept in the same job to be exploited in these precarious positions for years. Recent pressure from students and workers calling out this long-term abuse has caused administrators, including Chancellor John Wiley, to respond by letting workers' hours run out.
This happened to an employee at the Memorial Union who had been doing permanent work as an LTE since 1994. It is about to happen again to a DARS encoder at Bascom Hall who has worked as an LTE for 10 years. Turning uncertain employment into unemployment is not solving the problem of misclassification.
This is a social disruption worse than the constant dependency on low wage LTE labor, not to mention the constant cost of retraining LTEs due to high worker turnover rates. Students, workers and the unemployed want these demands to be clear to the administrators of this university, and everywhere this abuse is taking place in the state: permanent classifications for permanent work and a living wage for all campus and state workers now!
