BARGAINING
UPDATES

February 19, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Pitt staff, students, and faculty deserve to be safe from armed intruders on campus. We presented a proposal for an immediate agreement to keep ICE out of private work spaces without court authorization.

• We continue to make progress on Flexible Work Arrangements.

Your bargaining team was made aware of a Border Patrol Agent recruitment webinar that was being advertised at Pitt Career Central. The posting has since been removed, but we want to take this opportunity to voice our STRONG objection to any presence of ICE on campus. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler spoke out against reckless Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, saying that they are trampling on working people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, and that the acts of militarized immigration enforcement in cities across this country are not about safety. They are about power, and they are putting innocent working people in danger. (excerpted from https://aflcio.org/press/releases/afl-cio-ice-actions-are-putting-working-people-danger)  We think that attacks on US citizens and immigrants within our Pitt community are unacceptable, and we are calling on the Pitt administration to do more to protect us. To this end, we presented a proposal at our bargaining session on February 18 for an immediate agreement to keep outside law enforcement from accessing private work areas without a valid warrant.

We also offered a larger proposal for the contract that asks the administration to:

1. Preserve the jobs of bargaining unit staff detained by immigration authorities;

2. Not permit warrantless entry into private areas of the workplace by any outside civil or criminal law enforcement agency unless they have a valid criminal warrant issued by a court; and

3. Keep bargaining unit members' immigration status confidential.

The faculty and grad workers have presented similar proposals, and we hope that Pitt’s leadership will demonstrate support for their employees by quickly agreeing to them.

Also at the table, the parties continued to trade proposals on Flexible Work Arrangements. We are making progress, but more work remains to achieve meaningful protections for employees who have these arrangements. We further expressed our firm positions that the administration should commit to binding non-discrimination protections in our contract and that employees need adequate notice of layoff and the right to recall.

In solidarity,

Your bargaining committee

Jen Goeckeler-Fried, Chair, Biological Sciences, DSAS
Kearsten Adams, Recording Secretary, Academic Advising, UPG
Shawn Alfonso Wells, Pitt Global Experiences, UCIS
Mark Brown, DLAR
Lydia Chmill, Disability Resources & Services, OTC
Emily Daller, University Child Development Center, OHR
Jay Hornack, Law
Adriana Maguiña-Ugarte, Anthropology
Todd Shaffer, Office of Student Life, UPJ
Michelle Utz-Kiley, Epidemiology, SPH
Dan Wyszomierski, UPCI/NSABP
Matt Nader, USW
Nate Kilbert, USW
Don Shaffer, USW
Bernie Hall, District 10 Director, USW