Electricians and mechanics at USF vote to join new union after college privatizes their jobs in backroom deal

A small group of electricians and mechanics workers at the University of South Florida have overwhelmingly voted to join the International Union of Operating Engineers, after the university last year decided to unilaterally outsource their jobs to a government contractor.

“They want protection, they want to just show up and do their job and not work in fear, you know?” said Jonathan Ellingwood, an organizer for the IUOE Local 30, in an interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “I mean, they want better wages, they want a better pension, they want better health care—and Local 30, you know, fights for that.”

Workers voted 8-2 to join the IOUE, according to the National Labor Relations Board—demonstrating 100% voter turnout—while hundreds of other contracted employees, who similarly saw their jobs privatized last year, remain in a more precarious position at the university.

Last fall, the University of South Florida in Tampa moved to outsource roughly 400 blue-collar jobs at the university, after reaching a backroom deal with the Compass Group, a multinational government and private sector contractor that regularly contracts. Workers affected, including maintenance, electrical, and custodial employees, weren’t consulted at all, according to one worker who spoke to CL on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their job.

Just a year before, the situation would have been different. The workers had previously been represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a labor union that USF would have likely been required to consult and negotiate with before unilaterally privatizing jobs and consequently threatening the job security, wages, and benefits of the employees.

But after the Florida legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis passed a sweeping union reform law in 2023, making it harder for public sector unions to remain certified, AFSCME saw dozens of its unions across the state—including the workers’ at USF—dissolved. This has left thousands of local and state government workers without union representation, nor the protections previously guaranteed under their union contracts.

“We were forced into it,” said one maintenance worker at USF candidly, speaking to CL on the university’s decision to outsource his job. Although the Compass Group, a multibillion-dollar company with U.S. headquarters in North Carolina, reassured their new employees that their wages would remain the same, at least for the initial transition, the former state employees nonetheless lost their hard-earned government pension plans.

“That employer contribution to the FRS [Florida Retirement System] will no longer exist, because we no longer can contribute to the FRS,” the worker told CL last November, just one month before the official transition.

The university, which is currently seeking a new president, claimed the privatization deal would provide nearly $320 million in cost savings for the university, including a $25 million cost reduction for the contractor’s “enhanced facilities operations.”

It’s unclear, based on a redacted 209-page draft proposal CL obtained, what exactly “enhanced facility operations” entails.

But according to Ellingwood, the IUOE organizer, the electricians and mechanics at the university who recently opted to join his union were looking for the job security, the protections, and the basic rights of a union contract that they’d recently lost.

With union members along the east coast in Connecticut, New York, and Florida—where they also represent Veolia employees at Tampa Bay Water—Ellingwood said the next step is to begin bargaining a union contract for the workers.

Research has found that workers covered by a union contract earn 13.5% more on average than nonunion workers in the same jobs with a similar level of education and experience. The pay disparity is even greater for Black and Hispanic workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, who are more likely to be union members than white workers.

Union members, to Ellingwood’s point, are also more likely to have access to benefits that nonunion workers don’t—like a pension—or improved benefits, like more affordable health insurance and paid leave.

“We’re just organizing and getting the word out there, and truly letting the workers know of their rights,” Ellingwood told CL.

“Every time we have a contract out there, word’s going to spread,” he added. “Down here in Florida, we just gotta keep educating.”

Just about 6% of Florida’s entire workforce even has union representation, compared to 11% nationwide, and even fewer are dues-paying members. Since Florida is a right-to-work state, workers can’t be compelled to pay union dues, even if their job is covered by a union contract that they benefit from. Such policies have racist origins, initially pushed during the mid-20th century by Southern segregationists who saw a new movement of multiracial organizing at the time as a threat.

Ellingwood said the Compass Group took on the typical attitude of anti-union employers at USF—by urging workers to vote against unionization, and offering up “just the basic lies” of what it means to unionize, Ellingwood said with a chuckle but otherwise, he said the organizing drive at USF was pretty straightforward.

The contractor also negotiates with labor unions at other colleges and universities they contract with, including Northwestern University, where contracted food service workers are currently fighting for higher wages, better job security, and an improved pension with their union, Unite Here (stylized in all-caps).

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This article appears in Mar 6-12, 2025.