It’s been about a year and a half since the University of South Florida in Tampa unilaterally privatized hundreds of blue-collar jobs at the school, stripping workers of their state pension plans and outsourcing their jobs to a private contractor.
Affected workers previously told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that they were given no notice of the change in employment ahead of time, but were promised that their benefits and pay would remain stable—save for the attractive pension plan that had drawn many of them to their government jobs in the first place.
Now, the workers say their new employer—the Southeast Services Corporation (SSC)—is failing to live up to their commitments.
Several dozen SSC workers and community allies rallied just outside of the USF campus last Wednesday, protesting against low wages and out-of-reach healthcare, while fighting for a fair union contract.
“There’s so many broken promises that have already taken place,” Onex Cortez, a maintenance technician of about four years at USF, told CL. “Everybody’s tired of it.”
Originally from New York City, Cortez moved south several years ago and was drawn to the job at USF because of the state retirement plan—a pull he no longer has access to since USF outsourced his job to SSC. Based out of Knoxville, Tennessee, SSC is a higher education subsidiary of the multinational Compass Group, a private contractor that generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually.
“We have families. A lot of us are staring down, you know, looking down the barrel of retirement,” said Cortez, who’s in his 40s. It’s his job to help ensure the university’s buildings have running water and that everything in the campus’s common areas and residential buildings remain in working order.
“We’re fed up,” he admitted.
Originally announced as a “cost cutting” move, USF privatized roughly 400 largely blue-collar jobs, including Cortez’s, at the university in October 2024, shortly after the state decertified—or effectively dissolved—their former union, affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
A small group of these workers quickly reorganized with the International Union of Operating Engineers, voting overwhelmingly to unionize through the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees labor relations in the private sector.
But Cortez is one of hundreds more who reorganized with the labor union, 32BJ SEIU, which represents more than 185,000 workers across the country, including contracted employees at the Tampa International Airport.
At USF, the newly unionized workers with 32BJ are currently negotiating a first contract with SSC, a contractor the union has negotiated contracts with elsewhere. Union leaders admitted that in this case, however, they’ve encountered resistance at the bargaining table in Tampa.
“It’s just money right now,” said 32BJ SEIU Florida District Director Helene O’Brien, a 35-year organizer who’s spent the last decade organizing to build worker power in the U.S. South.
She, and other workers CL spoke to, said that SSC has effectively created a two-tier system since the privatization overhaul at USF, hiring new staff who are paid a lower wage, receive less paid time off, and are offered much costlier health insurance plans. “So many of them just decline health care altogether, because it’s premium-sharing, it’s high deductible, it’s copay — it’s crap,” O’Brien said bluntly.
It bothers the former state employees, described by SSC as “transitional” employees, too.
“I work with some of these guys that are kind of like the newer guys, right, that came in, you know, getting paid less than us,” Cortez said. “It’s unfair to them. It’s just not right.”
A SSC spokesperson told CL in a statement that their staff “are an important part of the work we do every day to support USF students, faculty, staff, and the broader campus community.”
“As we continue delivering the services that help the campus operate smoothly, we remain focused on maintaining a positive, supportive environment for our associates,” they continued. “We will continue discussions through the established bargaining process and remain committed to negotiating in good faith with the Union to reach an agreement that is fair to all.”
Amping up the pressure at USF protest
The SSC workers and community allies rallied just outside of the USF campus last Wednesday in support of negotiating a union contract that guarantees higher wages, equitable paid time off for new hires, and affordable healthcare.
They were joined by representatives of the West Central Florida Labor Council and the USF graduate assistant workers’ union, Graduate Assistants United, in addition to Tampa city councilman Luis Viera—a candidate for the Florida House—plus Tampa city councilwoman Lynn Hurtak, who’s running for Tampa mayor.
“These are working class service workers—in speaking with them, many are from Cuba or Venezuela,” Viera later wrote in a social media post. “I was proud to stand with these good people.”
According to O’Brien, economic proposals, such as wage increases and healthcare, are the primary sticking points at the bargaining table with SSC. The union is asking for a 6% raise for workers—since most workers haven’t received a raise since their jobs were outsourced in 2024—while SSC has offered a measly 1.5% raise in response.
“We believe that’s an insult to everybody,” said Juan Pena, an electrician of eight years at USF who spoke to CL shortly after the rally. He and his wife both work at USF, with her working as a janitor. Like Cortez, Pena was also initially drawn to the job for the formerly-guaranteed state pension plan, to help him plan for retirement. Now, they’re stuck with a 401k.
As for the wage offer from his employer, Pena’s not impressed. A 1.5% pay raise would provide just a $0.23 raise for a worker making $15 an hour at the university. “That is nothing,” Pena argued.
Still, O’Brien said that affordable healthcare is the main issue weighing on the minds—and pockets—of union members. Although SSC committed to keeping the former state employees on good healthcare plans, their new plans have still proven more expensive, she said, saddling workers and their families with higher out-of-pocket costs.
That includes Pena, who has a chronic health condition that requires him to get bloodwork done regularly. While he previously had no copay for that bloodwork under his former state insurance plan, his current plan—through SSC—now requires a $39+ minimum copay each time, which he said is difficult to shell out on his current income, since he hasn’t received any adjustment to his pay to offset the added cost.
Luz Estella Palacio Amaya, another SSC worker at USF, said she was unable to afford tests recommended by her gastroenterologist because she couldn’t afford the $2,000 copay under her new insurance plan. “My husband needs medication for his heart, blood pressure, and diabetes, and those cost money too,” she said in a statement. “We give our all to the university community, but what are we getting in return?”
O’Brien said many workers relied on their former state plans for affordable healthcare coverage, not just for themselves, but to take care of their families. With major cost spikes hitting plans through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace—following the expiration of expanded tax subsidies last year—workers now have fewer alternative, affordable options if they can’t afford the health insurance or copays under what they receive from their employer. That’s especially true for the lower-tier workers hired after SSC took over.
“We’re not asking for anything outrageous or outlandish or, like, extravagant,” Cortez argued. “We’re just asking for a fair contract for all of our employees, not just the transitional.”
‘Without anything in a contract and a union enforcing it, you can lose everything‘
32BJ SEIU Florida District Director Helene O’Brien
For workers like Cortez and Pena, seeing their jobs outsourced—and later protesting changes to their benefits, made after the fact—wasn’t exactly in the cards.
But USF had an easier time making this decision behind closed doors once the workers no longer had a union to look out for their collective best interests or guarantee job protections under an enforceable union contract.
Blue-collar maintenance, electrical, and white-collar non-instructional workers at USF first voted to unionize with AFSCME in 2004, according to state records. But after Florida lawmakers passed a controversial anti-union law (SB 256) in 2023—designed to undermine and destroy the state’s teachers unions—many other public blue-collar workers across the state, including workers at USF, saw their own unions decertified as collateral damage.
The law required more workers represented by the union to pay dues— a voluntary decision under the state’s ‘right to work’ law—while similarly making it harder for them to do so. Without union representation, workers were also left without an enforceable union contract. USF’s decision to outsource their jobs was announced within mere months of their union’s dissolution.
“No matter where you work—especially when working in an industry that’s easily outsourced—without anything in a contract and a union enforcing it, you can lose everything,” O’Brien pointed out. “These workers really are the cautionary tale for every public employee in Florida who is not doing what it needs to do to protect the union.”
State records show that more than 120 unions across the state have been decertified since the 2023 law—a priority of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—took effect. The law, largely excluding police and firefighter unions, was praised by anti-union groups that have found themselves allied with both the DeSantis and Trump administrations. Those relationships ultimately helped the same groups successfully lobby for the passage of a follow-up law (SB 1296) this year that will make it even harder for public sector unions in Florida to survive.
“We’ll see where that leads,” O’Brien said. “That leads to workers losing their pension, losing their health care, losing their paid time off, and you know, in a drive for so-called efficiency,” she said, referencing efforts by the state and Trump administration to downsize and eliminate government “waste.”
“Only the bottom of the ladder has to be efficient,” O’Brien clarified. “People at the top can do whatever they want.”
Cortez, a maintenance worker with more than 20 years of experience in his industry, admitted that when his coworkers first formed a union with 32BJ SEIU last summer, he was initially indifferent. He wasn’t that interested in getting involved.
Only about 6% of workers in Florida even have union representation, after all—leaving many largely uninformed about the potential benefits—and having a union is even less common in the private sector.
“All I had to do was attend one union meeting,” Cortez recalled. “Immediately I was just kind of sucked in.” As he spoke to his coworkers, and listened to their stories, “It really hit me,” he said. “I was like, man—something, somebody gotta do something, you know? We can’t just sit around.”
Considering his initial indifference, Cortez admitted he was a bit surprised by where he is today in the union’s fight for a fair contract. “I can’t believe how I went from—not very long ago—from not interested at all, to just like on the front lines of fighting this battle.”
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