United Staff UNM, formerly the UNM Staff Organizing Committee, organized in 1995 in order to effect changes in UNM policies through the collective bargaining process. Then, as now, we sought input to important decisions about salaries, working conditions, benefits, and grievance procedures. We wanted to make staff integral participants in the decision making process instead of mere bystanders.

The issues were clear: low morale, lack of opportunity for advancement, administrative unresponsiveness, arbitrary decision making, high staff turnover, low salaries, low retirement benefits, and a lack of lobbying power at the state legislature.

For five years and throughout a legal battle with the university to secure our bargaining rights, we purposefully worked to build support for collective bargaining through our publication, the Garlic Press, letters to the UNM Daily Lobo, and weekly meetings to strategize our campaign and respond to the latest actions or inaction by the University on issues important to staff. We actively sought and received endorsements from other staff and faculty organizations, and in June 1999 the UNM Board of Regents acknowledged our right to organize a local union.