About 60 people formed a picket line outside the Crisler Center during the University of Michigan’s Winter Commencement ceremony Sunday afternoon. Protestors carried homemade signs next to an inflatable Grinch they set up meant to criticize the University’s greed. University Staff United, a University-wide union of non-supervisory staff members, organized the event to demand better pay while it negotiates its first contract with the University. These employees include residential life associates, financial aid officers, counseling psychologists and audio-visual technicians.
USU claims the University’s best offer included a 3% year-over-year pay increase for employees working on the Ann Arbor campus, but only a 1% yearly increase for workers on the University’s Dearborn and Flint campuses. In the United States, the average inflation rate was 2.9% in 2024, meaning the cost of living is rising faster than the proposed salaries of U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint employees.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, USU president Nathan Sadowsky, academic program manager for the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said the union — which the University first recognized in February — has made gains in preventing artificial intelligence from replacing employees but is now focused on staff compensation.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Sadowsky said. “We’ve resolved all of the non-economic issues, but they’ve currently offered us a salary offer that our members just feel is not acceptable, and we’re protesting here for them to come back and offer something that provides real, meaningful raises for everyone and living wages for those of the lowest salaries.”
USU vice president Terese Theophilus, a teacher at the North Campus Children’s Center, told The Daily she believes University executives should better distribute money to the lower-paid employees whose work sustains the institution.
“We come to work every (week) for 40 hours or more, and they give us pennies,” Theophilus said. “We put all our energy, we put all of our time, all of our knowledge into this university and they refuse to give us anything back in return. They give the high, top people plenty of money. We’re just asking them to share some of that.”
In an interview with The Daily, Craig Smith, senior associate librarian at the University Library and member of LEO-GLAM, the branch of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization that represents non-tenure track workers in the University’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums, said he protested in support of his USU colleagues and to criticize the University’s financial decisions and increased spending on surveillance.
“Being quiet isn’t an option when injustice is happening, and the University has so much money and they’re not distributing it fairly,” Smith said. “They’re cutting things that shouldn’t be cut, like block grants for arts and humanities, like cutting a statistical consultant program on campus. They’re amping up with millions of dollars of surveillance and policing on our campus, and they can’t pay staff fairly.”
Sadowsky said demonstrating at commencement is a way to celebrate with the graduates, noting many protesting staff members have helped the students throughout their time at the University.
“Our members specifically work with students from before they’re admitted to the University,” Sadowsky said. “Admissions counselors and financial aid officers play a really important part in making sure that students are able to get to the point where they’re graduating here. We’re excited to be here tonight and celebrate with them.”
Smith said he hoped the graduates enjoyed the ceremony while also remembering the injustices taking place on campus.
“Effective protest does cause a little disruption — it causes a little discomfort,” Smith said. “We’re trying to get people to confront something that’s really unfair, and I hope that people still have an amazing time today and celebrate the way they should. They deserve that, but we want this injustice to be on people’s minds.”
Daily News Editor Dominic Apap can be reached at dapap@umich.edu.
