SU workers union: Students must take COVID-19 seriously

Editor’s Note: The Service Employees International Union Local 200United represents over 850 Syracuse University employees, including facilities workers, food service workers and others.

Dear Syracuse University students and campus community members,

Recently our entire campus and the local community saw the video of a gathering of students on campus who were not following university guidelines designed to safeguard us all against Coronavirus. What we saw shocked us.

To do our jobs cooking, cleaning, and making repairs on campus, we need to be in students’ spaces. This makes us susceptible to transmittable illnesses like COVID-19. When our shift ends, we go home to our families, where we could carry the disease to our spouses and our children, and they can carry it to their jobs, and to their schools that are soon opening. Our entire community can suffer due to the consequences of just a few bad decisions. Beside illness, SU staff rely on our jobs to provide for our families. We heard our coworkers asking today: how long are we going to stay gainfully employed if these actions continue? We worry that if the campus closes we won’t be able to pay our bills. In our union alone, nearly 1,000 families rely on the income from our work at SU.

As campus workers, we are here to care for students, and we care about you. We want you to have the campus experience you want. We’ve been working hard for months, deep cleaning and installing new infrastructure all over campus, like pallets full of hand-sanitizer and changing out air dryers for paper towel dispensers. All to make the campus safer and stop the spread of COVID-19. We must all do our part to keep each other safe. We are asking you as students to do your part.

Thanks to everyone who is working hard to respect others in our community and keep us all safe. Our fate is in the hands of us all, students and staff doing the right thing.

Sincerely,

Craig Powers

Machine Repair Technician, SEIU 200United Chapter Chair

Scott Phillipson

SEIU 200United President,

Syracuse University College of Law, ‘03