<< Front page Commentary September 3, 2004

OCOPE needs more support

To the Editors:

I grew up in Oberlin and I’ve come to appreciate its progressive and liberal history. The College was the first to admit women and one of the first to admit African-Americans. Oberlin was active in anti-slavery issues and was a major link in the Underground Railroad.

I was accustomed to seeing openly gay students on campus. That was the Oberlin College I grew up with but it is not the Oberlin College of today. The College president and many on the Board of Trustees now want to model Oberlin College after large, heartless corporations.

Their actions lately have been more reminiscent of Enron than a progressive institution of higher learning. The College is now in the process of negotiating a new labor agreement with one of the unions on campus, the Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees (OCOPE). Even though the College is flush with capital it is insisting the employees pay a higher percentage of their health care costs in the new contract while not offering adequate pay increases to compensate this loss or even keep up with the average increase in the cost of living.

The College is demanding a clause in the contract to hike employee premiums at any time if health care costs go up. According to an interview with Nancy Dye, printed in the Nov. 21, 2003 issue of the Review, the College had a $300,000 surplus during the previous year due to lower-than-expected health care costs. This surplus went into the College’s general fund and was not applied to future employee health care benefits. The College says that OCOPE members must share more in the costs, but is not willing to let them share in the fruits of their labors.

The union offered a $300,000 concession on healthcare costs but the College would not agree, saying employees’ spouses must get coverage from their employers regardless of the overall cost to these families. The College says the union must be “equitable” with the other groups on campus. Really?

The College will offer 20 percent tuition remission for OCOPE members’ children while everyone else on campus receives 50 percent for theirs. The OCOPE families make less money and are in more need of tuition assistance than the other groups, but they get less than half the benefit of everyone else; that does not sound equitable to me. At a conference in Cleveland, Oberlin College President Nancy Dye said, “Our children — all of our children — are our greatest resource. We need to figure out how to direct more of the colossal wealth now being created by this nation to our schools and our children.”

Nancy, I couldn’t agree more, especially the part where you say all of our children deserve this opportunity. How can you ask the families to sacrifice more when many of them are already working two jobs to make ends meet and some are nearly bankrupt from having a sick child and are getting slaughtered by sky high prescription costs that doubled last year? How can you ask families to not expect their pay to keep up with inflation after you were awarded a $1 million bonus by the Board of Trustees?

The College motto, “Learning and Labor,” is representative of the creed that learning and hard work can achieve great things. I just finished painting one of the rocks on Tappan Square, another proud Oberlin tradition. Two of the rocks had already been painted by college students who support the union in this fight. We added a quote from Sophocles: “Without labor, nothing prospers.”

The OCOPE union is providing the labor, it is up to the College to meet it with the prosperity that they deserve. I added a quote at the end, “families first.” That is something that is lost in the heartless corporate world and I hope I’m wrong about the mentality of the College president and the Board of Trustees. Because if the College can’t support the families that support the College, then Oberlin College has surely lost its way.

–John Pardee
Spouse of OCOPE member Linda Pardee


 
 
   

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