There is a new union at a local college in Monroe County. Non-teaching staff at Nazareth University will now be represented by Nazareth United Professionals.
More than 140 office workers at the university voted in favor of forming a union, according to NYSUT, which represents the local union.
Bernadette Rall, a senior music department assistant who has been at the university for about 24 years, became a union organizer in January. She is a year from retirement, and said many people have asked why she got involved.
“My mother always taught me ... always leave something better than you found it,” she said. “So, I'm like, ‘This is for the future employees.’ This wasn't just about me.”
There’s been a noticeable decline in working conditions in the past five years, she said — wages not keeping up with inflation, expensive healthcare benefits, and an increasingly overbearing workload.
“I have been working more than one person's job for quite a while,” Rall said. "That’s the other thing that we're going to try and resolve is having positions re-filled once they're let go.”
Unionizing efforts on higher education campuses have been rising nationwide. Among graduate student-employees, union membership more than doubled between 2012 and 2024, and faculty unions have steadily increased in that same timeframe, according to the National Education Association.
Locally, a unionizing effort by University of Rochester graduate student-employees is at a stalemate over the election process.
A spokesperson with Nazareth University said in a statement that the university respects the desires of the staff who voted to form a union.
“Nazareth values the contributions of all staff,” university spokesperson Julie Long wrote in an email. “These talented individuals are part of the fabric of our institution and integral to fulfilling Nazareth’s educational mission.”
The vote took place on April 30, and the results were finalized in mid-May by the National Labor Relations Board. Now it’s up members of the Nazareth United Professional or NazUP local to establish their bylaws and constitution, Rall said, and negotiate a contract.
“We have already sent out a bargaining survey to everyone that's eligible to be in the union asking them to answer questions about what's most important to them, so that we can kind of rank them,” Rall said.
It’s not unheard of for non-teaching staff to be represented by a teachers union. NYSUT also represents support staff, security guards, and municipal employees around the state.
“One of the lesser-known things about NYSUT is the variety,” a spokesperson with NYSUT said in an email. “We believe that all workers need unions, and everyone deserves NYSUT support.
