University of Chicago Press employees announced in a press release on Monday that they have formed a union—the UCP Workers Guild—to promote “equitable pay, sustainable working conditions, and transparency,” according to the union’s mission statement.
The union is requesting voluntary recognition from the Press’s leadership by this Friday, said Sierra Wilson, a production specialist in the books department of the Press. Otherwise, they will seek an election monitored by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by mail.
The union is affiliated with the Chicago News Guild, TNG-CWA Local 34071. According to Wilson, the workers opted to join the News Guild because of its positive track record with the Oxford University Press and Duke University Press unions. Unions at those university presses were not voluntarily recognized by their respective institutions, but both won their elections.
In an email to the Maroon, University of Chicago Press Director Garrett Kiely said the press “acknowledge[s] receipt of the information about the unionization effort and [is] working with the University departments that have a process for responding to this.”
To form a union, a majority of workers must sign union authorization cards. The union then requests voluntary recognition from its employer and, if recognized, can begin bargaining. If an employer refuses to recognize the union but at least 30 percent of workers have signed cards, a petition can be filed with the NLRB to officiate a mail-based election. If the union wins a majority of votes cast, the employer must bargain in good faith over working conditions.
The University’s website lists 16 active collective bargaining agreements. Other recent unionization efforts on campus include the Graduate Student Union (GSU), certified by an NLRB election in 2017, a result that was appealed by the University; the University ultimately recognized the union in 2023 after several years of strikes and another election. The Writing Faculty Union was denied voluntary recognition to join Faculty Forward, a national union initiative affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), in 2023, but later did so through an NLRB election.
Out of more than 270 workers at the University of Chicago Press, 139 are eligible to join the union, Wilson said. That includes employees across all three divisions—the Book Division, Journals Division, and Chicago Distribution Center—as well as administrative staff in informational technology, finance, and intellectual property. Jobs in customer service, marketing, manuscript editing, book design, production, and acquisitions are also union-eligible. Managerial positions and Chicago Distribution Center staff that are already part of Teamsters Local 743, another union for mail-order, technical, and warehouse workers, are not eligible to join.
Wilson said that the unionizing effort grew out of “many small and spontaneous moments of connection across departments” and “collective action among small groups.” She said that the idea began percolating in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees had to rethink their approach to the workplace, and those varied modes of work are reflected in the union’s demands today.
“We seek to support the well-being of our coworkers and their families by protecting and promoting policies that meet their diverse needs, including hybrid and remote work agreements, flexible hours, and disability accommodations,” the UCP Workers Guild mission statement reads.
The statement advocates for fair base compensation, additional raise schedules based on performance, and clear promotion guidelines. “We do think that one job should be enough,” Wilson said. “One of the shocking things about talking to our colleagues was realizing how many people have side gigs.”
The union also aims to secure worker protections amid the rise of generative AI, which Wilson says the Press has floated as a potential solution to certain challenges. “We don’t think it can take the place of what human beings at the Press are doing,” Wilson said.
She also said the University’s budget crisis and subsequent hiring freezes have been a concern at the Press. Accordingly, the union mission statement calls to “demystify the press’s operational relationship to the university and the bureaucratic policies that prevent managers from hiring, retaining, and rewarding staff.”
A supermajority of the eligible workers have already signed union authorization cards, according to Wilson. “We love our jobs, and we want to be able to see ourselves here in the long term,” she said. “The union is a way that we can build and secure a good future for all of us at the Press. There are strong labor communities on campus, and it’s really exciting to see what they’ve accomplished and [to] join them.”
