Schmoozing among painted snowflakes and between mouthfuls of fine food, union officers will be looking beyond the festive season during their yearly Christmas gathering with students.

Their goal is to continue raising student awareness and support, with tri-annual contract negotiations with the College looming next spring.

The Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees, formed over 30 years ago, represents the secretaries, lab managers, library assistants, animal caretakers, equipment and computer technicians, piano tuners and cashiers at Oberlin. It is a local division of the Office and Professional Employees International Union.

The union feels that raising awareness is especially important given the timing of the negotiations, which will begin around the end of June and continue throughout the summer.

“We have a lot of support from students,” Vice-President Traci Tucker said. “That’s why they usually wait until the students are gone before they pull things.”

“A lot of times students can overlook the people who work the hardest at this school,” said Renata Strause of the Oberlin College Democrats. “With negotiations coming up, it’s important that students talk to union members to find out what their concerns are.”

Acccording to OCOPE student interest in union reached its peak last year, when the union acted against the school’s budget cuts and the resulting layoffs.

“Students did a lot of research for us,” Tucker said, “as well as helping to organize and plan events.”

These events included a student-labor solidarity Christmas party, the predecessor to today’s event, and a memorial service held last November for “the spirit of Oberlin.” Both events followed the College’s decision to eliminate 11 staff positions.

“The relationship has improved in some aspects since then,” President of OCOPE Diane Lee said. “But there’s still room for improvement.”

The union’s primary concern and the issue that they anticipate to be the main point of contention during the negotiations is the College’s recent plan to restructure their health care plan.

The College’s plans call for employees to be responsible for 15 percent of their health care costs within the year. This comes on top of a recent switch in healthcare provider, which has reduced employee claims by $2 million while raising costs and prescription drug expenses.

“The College administration keeps telling OCOPE that our members are costing the College too much money,” Lee said. “But they’ve yet to show us any documentation which proves this.”

The school’s reluctance to divulge this information has cast doubt among some regarding the validity of their claim, but OCOPE is waiting for more information before they rush to judgment.

“I’m not going to say they’re lying until I’ve seen the actual documentation that their case is based on,” Tucker said.

The negotiations will begin at some point in the late spring or early summer, but the exact date has not been set.

“We’ve been requesting dates from Oberlin for four months, but have not received an answer yet,” Lee said.

The employees’ contracts are set to expire on June 30.

Despite these concerns, Lee is confident going into this year’s negotiations round, largely due to increased cooperation.

“The main difference this year is that the three employees unions [OCOPE, the United Auto Workers, which represents food service employees, and the Oberlin College Security Association, which represents security workers] are united in our goals and our approach.”

Tomorrow’s Christmas party is co-sponsored by the OC Dems and will be held in the Science Center lobby.

The party, initiated last year as an alternative to Nancy Dye’s yearly holiday party, was a protest against the administration’s party, which both organizations felt was an improper and excessive use of College funds at a time when the College claimed to be in a budget crisis.

“We came up with the party along with OCOPE as a creative way to protest the school spending money for alcohol and shrimp platters while claiming to not have enough money for the union’s very modest proposals,” Strause said.

“The party is a chance for students and workers to get outside their normal social spheres and meet each other,” Lee said.

“There are a lot of issues that need to be discussed and plans that have to be made,” she added, “But mainly its just to have fun.