2024 Negotiations with SEIU Higher Education Workers Local 2007

Staff are central to Stanford’s mission and a vital part of our university community. Stanford employs over 15,000 non-teaching employees who support teaching, learning and research at the university. We strive to provide employees with an excellent and supportive working environment and competitive wages and benefits.

In our negotiations with SEIU Higher Education Workers Local 2007 (SEIU) for a new contract, Stanford is committed to a collaborative and collegial bargaining process that supports both the university’s operations and our represented employees.

SEIU is the exclusive representative of approximately 1,360 employees including, but not limited to,  those working as food service workers, custodians, maintenance workers, groundskeepers, life science technicians and accelerator technologists in units across the university such as Residential & Dining Enterprises; Land, Buildings & Real Estate; the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; and the School of Medicine. 

The university and SEIU have one collective bargaining agreement that covers all of the employees represented by SEIU. The current agreement has a term ending August 31, 2024. The university and SEIU will begin negotiations for a successor contract in late May 2024.

About the Negotiations

The university and SEIU are mutually obligated to negotiate in good faith over wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment. Labor relations between the university and SEIU are governed by the National Labor Relations Act, which sets guidelines on issues such as scope of representation and requirements on negotiating in good faith. University Human Resources - Employee & Labor Relations (or “UHR-ELR”) is the university’s principal representative during labor negotiations, and is joined and assisted at the bargaining table by additional management and/or HR representatives from other departments. 

Negotiations generally follow the below process:

• The negotiation teams discuss issues and interests of both the university and SEIU, as well as exchange written proposals and information related to those issues.
• Both the university and SEIU are expected to provide written proposals at the bargaining table, to foster discussion and to allow each side to ask any questions they may have about the proposals.
• A tentative agreement on a successor collective bargaining agreement is typically reached and signed at the conclusion of negotiations.
• This tentative agreement is then subject to ratification by the union members and approval by the university. The terms of the tentative agreement are then incorporated into the successor collective bargaining agreement.