In early July, UVM launched a Dependents Audit, requiring employees to upload birth certificates, marriage licenses, adoption papers to third-party multinational WTW by September 5 in order to save money for the university by removing healthcare coverage for so-called ineligible family members. UVMSU members immediately recognized the danger of surrendering sensitive personal documents at a time when the federal government is targeting immigrant and queer workers and students. It also looked an awful lot like what the federal administration is doing: making unfounded accusations of waste, fraud, and abuse, asking for our papers, and targeting DEI work, so, together with United Academics and UE Local 267, we fought back.
Together, we demanded to bargain the terms of the audit and wrote UVM’s new President on her first day in office to share our concerns and request a meeting. Instead of agreeing to those requests, the HR director agreed to a meeting. While that meeting was not productive, these initial steps were important in that they demonstrated to our members that we were willing to work with the administration in good faith. We kept members in the loop by sharing our letter to the President and reporting out on every meeting in our weekly member emails.
It was critical to get a sense of how members were feeling about the audit directly, so we created a survey to understand their concerns, and find out what they were willing to do about it. Within a few weeks, almost 700 people across campus participated in the survey, revealing broader trends in member sentiment while providing personal stories that brought home the individual/family impact of the audit. It also helped us gauge which types of collective action had the broadest support and would most effectively demonstrate our power.
When UVM still refused to negotiate, we turned to people power. We built an action plan based on the member feedback we’d received, starting with a show of unity in which members of all three unions wore their union t-shirts to work on the first Wednesday in August.
UVM again refused to negotiate or change course, so it was time to turn up the heat. A week later, employees from all 3 unions marched on HR and the President’s wing, calling a pause of the audit and negotiations.
During the demonstration, we delivered a survey report amplifying the concerns of our members. We also filled out “attestations” that our dependents were, in fact, eligible for insurance coverage to demonstrate that members’ willingness to sign legally binding documents confirming their dependent’s eligibility, as was past practice at UVM. As members from all three unions placed their attestations on the desk, many took the mic to share how the audit would affect them and their families. Diane Richer in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics said,
“I have been here for 40 years. In all the 40 years, all of my children have been on here [UVM insurance], my husband has been on here. As my children have come of age and reached the limit of eligibility, I have taken them off one at a time as they’ve happened. I’m sorry but if you don’t have my information by now, you can kiss my ass cause I’m already at low wages, and this is the only thing that really holds me here.”
Sarina Garcia in Student Financial Services put the audit in the broader context of our current political moment, sharing,
“When I got married, I did not take my husband’s very white last name. I kept my very brown last name of Garcia. I do not trust this third party company to not hand over our personal information to the federal government that is on a witch hunt for ‘illegals,’ cause its never been about citizenship status, it’s been about white supremacy.” Sarina Garcia, SFS
Almost a dozen members spoke, and before leaving we left a note for President Tromp on top of the survey report that said, “Sorry we missed you! See you at Convocation!” to ratchet up the pressure by explicitly threatening to take further public action at a ceremonial UVM event geared towards welcoming first year students. Convocation is an important photo op for the administration, and they certainly wouldn’t want angry workers stealing their spotlight at Marlene Tromp’s first big public event since taking office.
Media coverage played an important role in building our leverage. Three days before the event, we sent a press advisory to every local media outlet. On the morning of the rally, we followed up with calls to all outlets to confirm that they would attend. Our outreach resulted in strong media coverage from Local 22, WCAX and VT Digger. While media coverage is often imperfect and never a silver bullet, we know that UVM has an attentive PR machine that hates bad press, so this coverage was strategic.
Coming out of the rally, hundreds of UVM employees continued to wait to comply with the audit, protecting their data and making HR sweat in advance of the September 5th deadline. Our advice from the moment the audit launched was to encourage members to wait to submit their documents until we had assurances about how WTW would store and secure their data. In response, UVM HR and WTW created a sense of urgency with increasingly threatening auto-generated emails to employees who had yet to submit their documents. By continually communicating with member emails, update videos, and at public events like the rally, we were able to effectively counter management’s fear campaign and make waiting to submit seem a lot less scary.
Five days after the rally, the University capitulated by announcing two major changes to the audit: UVM agreed to direct WTW to delete all UVM data immediately after the end of the audit, and they announced that employees could verify their dependents directly with UVM HR. While we had consistently advocated for the past practice of attestation, rather than a third–party audit, winning these concessions showed that even when our right to bargain is denied, collective pressure can force our employer to change course. Moreover, we won because we communicated our action strategy clearly to the University and the broader community and articulated exactly why our members were not complying. And perhaps most importantly, we won because we harnessed the incredible power of solidarity by bringing three campus unions together in shared struggle and determined resistance.