PROVIDENCE – More than 60 union employees at the Rhode Island School of Design walked off the job Thursday morning, with some picketing outside campus buildings, after ongoing negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement between the arts school and Teamsters Local 251 hit an impasse.
The one-day strike, which will end at around 3:30 a.m. Friday, also comes after union employees – who are custodians, movers and grounds-services staffers working at RISD – held an informational picket last month. The two sides have been negotiating since June 2022.
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RISD said it “does not expect” the strike to affect access to school buildings, resources or other school-related activities.
The brief walkout by union employees also follows complaints Local 251 filed with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board against RISD over pay rates and wage increases.
Teamsters Local 251 Principal Officer Matthew Taibi told Providence Business News that RISD had a “uniform pay rate” for new custodians, movers and grounds-services staffers of about $15.30 per hour. However, he says the last two such employees the school hired were given a $1 an hour higher pay rate than the current union workers on staff.
“[The new employees] got more money starting out than those who have been [at RISD] for quite some time without bargaining [with] us over that,” Taibi said.
The RISD employees currently striking voted to unionize in February 2022, Taibi said. Four months later, he says those employees did not get their annual wage increase on July 1, 2022, as they would traditionally receive from RISD. The union alleges RISD discriminated against bargaining unit employees by failing to pay the general wage increase, according to records obtained by PBN.
RISD spokesperson Jaime Marland said the union received its “last and best” offer on Feb. 16. The offer included providing each union employee with an average $2,300 payment retroactive to July 1. The college did not receive a response from Local 251 by the March 1 deadline, Marland said.
Taibi said the union rejected RISD’s proposal because it had “virtually no changes” to the school’s earlier proposal, which he says was “not recognizing the needs and demands of the group.” He also claimed the school threatened to take the retroactive pay offer off the table. “We think that’s totally arbitrary and unreasonable,” Taibi said.
The union on March 18 gave RISD a counterproposal and Taibi said the school did not respond to the offer before the union’s Wednesday deadline. That resulted in the employees currently walking the picket line.
Marland said the union’s counterproposal included “unreasonable demands related to benefits and excessive demands for compensation identical to previous proposals.”
The two sides plan to meet again after the one-day strike concludes on Friday. Marland says RISD is committed to bringing this conflict to a “successful conclusion.”
“For that to happen, union leaders need to negotiate in a meaningful way so that together we can create a contract that fairly compensates our employees for their vital service in a fiscally responsible way,” Marland said.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
