SGEU announces election dates to certify unionization

By Dominic Chiappone asst. news editor

After launching its unionization campaign on Jan. 17 in pursuit of improved working conditions at Syracuse University, Syracuse Graduate Employees United announced two election dates for members to decide on whether to certify its unionization effort.

SGEU will host voting sessions on April 3 and April 4 between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the JMA Wireless Dome in hopes of officially entering formal negotiations with the university administration, said Lauren Ashby, a member of the SGEU organizing committee and master’s student in geography.

On Wednesday, SGEU hosted in-person and virtual sessions to discuss specifics on the union election agreement with SU and clarify logistics for the election vote in April.

SGEU announced it had reached an election agreement with the university on March 1. The next day, SU’s Provost, Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Gretchen Ritter notified SU students via email about the joint agreement and encouraged a respectful and equitable process in a co-signed message with Scott Phillipson, president of the Service Employees International Union.

In a separate Tuesday email to the SU community, Ritter said the university will not take a formal position on if SGEU decides to vote in favor of a union or not. SU also created a webpage with frequently asked questions to inform students, faculty and staff about the unionization process.

“What we will do is encourage our graduate students to give this careful consideration and make an informed decision,” Ritter wrote in the Tuesday email. “Should our graduate students make the collective decision to unionize, we will engage their union in the same collaborative, transparent and fair manner as we do with our existing union partners.”

Ashby said SGEU is working with SU’s administration to create a path to a fair and neutral election process. The university currently works with four unions which represent a total of approximately 1,400 university employees, according to Ritter’s Tuesday message.

Ashby said the agreement with SU allowed SGEU to secure a union election in the wake of anti-union efforts at other institutions like Temple University, which students presented as a concern for the unionization effort during forums.

If SGEU members vote in favor, the union will be able to engage in a formal bargaining process with the university, Ash by said.

The feeling of isolation extended to her extracurricular activities when she said her peers joked about “World War Three” before the invasion.

SU sophomore Ukrainian Club member Anna Salewycz said the war has taken a toll on her mental health and academic performance over the past year. She said she struggled with feelings of isolation and helplessness.

“It got to a point where I was sobbing multiple times a day and I was like, if I don’t take the break from the news, my own mental health is going to just continue to decline, and I’m not going to do well in school. I need to pass, but I also want to help,” Salewycz said. “It was just all these mixed emotions.”

Salewycz added that being a second-generation Ukranian-American — in addition to in her first year at SU and not having a car on campus at the time — made her feel isolated from the Ukrainian community, which she said she cherished at her home in New Jersey.

“I always knew being Ukrainian was a big part of my life, but I don’t think I realized how big of a hole there was until it wasn’t there,” Salewycz said. “Especially when the war broke out, I just felt very isolated and alone, because there is a Ukrainian community here, but it’s just so different from what I grew up with.”

“In that moment, I was just frozen. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do, because it’s like, ‘how can you be so ignorant?’” Salewycz said. “People not having empathy until it became super, super real…made it even more difficult.”

But even before the beginning of the war, Russia and Ukraine had been in a volatile war state, Taylor explained. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, it launched an entire separatist war in Donbas. He said that now, following a year of direct war, both Russia and Ukraine have experienced significant losses in personnel and equipment.

SU students outside the Ukrainian community have also worked to show support by collecting funds and resources for Ukraine on campus. Many students donated to the Ukraine Club’s drive in April 2022 to collect everyday resources — shampoo, toothpaste and medicine — and fill all of the provided boxes to donate to Ukrainian citizens in need.

Patricia Burak, the faculty advisor for the Ukrainian Club who teaches Russian literature in the College of Arts and Sciences, said more students visited the club’s

A decrease in SNAP dollar circulation will also harm the Syracuse economy, Lare said. In cities like Syracuse where over 30% of people receive and spend SNAP money on groceries, many people’s jobs depend on SNAP dollars being spent at their place of employment. These jobs include people stocking the shelves, working in the checkout line or trucking the food to the grocery store.

“[SNAP] is a major economic driver. Those are federal dollars that are coming directly back into the state and helping to fuel the state economy, while simultaneously helping people meet their food needs. This is, overall, going to hurt,” Lare said.

Many grocery stores in the Syracuse area accept SNAP as a form of payment. Jeremy DeChario, the General Manager of the Syracuse Cooperative Market, said their downtown location in Salt City Market receives 10% of their business from SNAP. This is due to the market’s proximity to the Rescue Mission and concentrated poverty, DeChario said. table at this year’s CultureFest in September, just over six months after the invasion, than ever before.

The Syracuse Cooperative Market is also a participant of the Double Up Food Bucks program. When people use their SNAP benefits, Double Up matches their fruit and vegetable purchases dollar for dollar, up to $20 per day. People who use SNAP are incentivised to shop at stores that participate in Double Up because it makes fresh foods more affordable, DeChario said.

With the end of the Emergency Allotment, DeChario believes that people will have less discretionary money to spend on fresh produce at stores like the Cooperative Market.

“It’s been really awesome to see just how much support we’ve gained, not just among grad workers, but among the campus community at large,” Ashby said.

Over 250 SGEU members and allies marched from Carnegie Library to Crouse-Hinds Hall on Feb. 8 to deliver letters from 14 different campus and community groups demanding the university administration voluntarily recognize its union, including SGEU, the Undergraduate Labor Organization, the Student Association and the Graduate Student Organization.

In its effort to negotiate for better working conditions, graduate workers cited issues like low pay, poor healthcare benefits and high workload demands.

“The students themselves have come closer together. They really want to support each other and to show support for Ukraine in whatever way they can,” Burak said.

Burak said when the university reached out to her and asked how to best help Ukrainian students, she was able to help several students financially throughout the spring semester by consulting with students, academic advisors and university leaders.

In addition to concern for Ukrainian students, Burak said she has worried about Russian students at SU. She emphasized her understanding and belief that no Russian citizen wants this war.

“They’re not happy that their sons and daughters and fathers are being drafted to fight this war. So many people have died, and I would say — on a personal basis — died needlessly,” Burak said.

Williams said that regarding global alliances, the world has mainly been in support of Ukraine and condemned Russia as the violator in the war.

“If you look at most of the U.N. votes, the vast majority of countries in the world will come down and say that Russia was wrong,”

Instead, they will likely shop at the many dollar stores around Syracuse or big corporations like Walmart, he said.

“Walmart is a huge recipient of SNAP EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) dollars. The cruel irony is that they pay their employees not enough money, so their employees benefit from (SNAP),” DeChario said. “Taxpayers subsidize the cheap labor costs for Walmart so they can have record profits, but their employees don’t make enough money to buy food themselves.”

On Feb. 15, Wegmans announced they will allow EBT SNAP payments for online orders through both their website and app.

But parents in Syracuse will likely be the most impacted population by the end of the Emergency Allotment, said Maura Ackerman, director of the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance. Ackerman said the

Ashby said that in light of union successes at other institutions, like increased stipends at Brown University as well as capped work hours at Georgetown University and Harvard University, SGEU could potentially start pushing for further compromises with the university.

“There’s a lot of momentum right now around grad worker unions, around kind of big successes and big efforts,” Ashby said. “So it’s been really exciting and it’s going to be awesome to kind of keep that going here and to win our election and to start making real progress.” dcchiapp@syr.edu @DominicChiappo2

Williams said. “But they nevertheless continue to have relationship business.”

Amid the high number of casualties and continued global tension, Taylor said he doesn’t see any quick end to the war, but offered that exhausted militaries on both sides may mean lower intensity going into the second year.

As the war continues and reaches the one year mark, Colopelnic said he’s grateful that so many SU students, faculty and staff have stood with Ukraine through support of SU’s Ukrainian Club.

“We want a bright future for Ukraine for all of us, because really, it’s a beautiful country, and great people and we just want to share that with the rest of the world too,” Colopelnic said.

Colopelnic and Salewycz both emphasized the importance of continuing to advocate for Ukraine, both financially and spiritually.

“The people on the front lines need your prayers. They need your donations,” Salewycz said. “At the end of the day, the war isn’t about me. I’m just a UkrainianAmerican that can speak to my experience and dealing with it.” kaluther@syr.edu @kendallaluther end in additional benefits will disproportionately impact families with children in Syracuse. The city has a 49.1% poverty rate — one of the highest child poverty rates in the country.

“ We know that parents, by virtue of trying to protect their children, are the first to experience food insecurity,” Ackerman said. “They are more likely to skip meals or reduce their caloric intake or reduce the quality of food that they eat, so that they can preserve their children’s ability to eat.”

Families across Syracuse are already anticipating the effects of the end of the Emergency Allotment, Lare said.

“I have heard voicemails from individuals who are going to be impacted, talking about how devastating it’s going to be for their families,” Lare said. “And it’s heartbreaking. It really is.” jskahen@syr.edu fail to acknowledge and recognize the fact that some people will still find it hard to access the law and to enjoy this benefit because of their sex,” Somolekae said.

Somolekae has sat on boards filled mostly with men, and she said it’s been difficult for her to assert her own opinion and even express her intelligence. Somolekae said she would go to the bathroom after being ignored to avoid getting emotional around the men in the room.

“In the political and the private sector, even in academics, you always have to fight for that space to be seen and to be heard,” Somolekae said.

Somolekae identified two lessons for attendees: for people to confront their own personal bias, and in the future, for men and women to learn to work together. She said a past mistake in the women’s rights movement has been alienating male colleagues who could have helped advance the movement.

Moving forward, Somolekae said she remains optimistic about improving the way women are treated and empowered.

“We must keep working hard,” she said. “We must keep holding each other’s hands. We must keep collaborating. We must keep integrating and sharing.” bmille19@syr.edu

@britt61370