United Campus Workers challenge UK’s Integrate Blue initiative

The United Campus Workers of Kentucky held a rally protesting the University of Kentucky’s plans to outsource and reassign staff to a private company.

Part of UCW’s “Protect our Services” campaign, the rally was held on Saturday, April 11, in the Laborers’ Union Local 189 building. A number of UK faculty, UCW members and Lexington city council members were in attendance.

The rally protested UK’s Integrate Blue initiative, which its website describes as an effort to “more fully integrate and align functional services across the enterprise” in order to improve organizational efficiency. The initiative involves reassigning workers under its limited liability company, Beyond Blue.

Member of UCW and UK employee Dan Moon said under Integrate Blue, hundreds of information technology and marketing communications employees have been reassigned to Beyond Blue.

“We know what comes along when people use the word “efficiency,” it often leads to cuts to benefits in pay and staffing,” Moon said. “We’re concerned about the impact that this is going to have on our campus and on the rest of Lexington.”

Additionally, Moon said UK is looking for a private company to outsource custodial, groundskeeping and maintenance jobs under a 30-year contract, leaving employees concerned about how current and future employees will be affected, that initiative is called the Enterprise Services Partnership.

The Enterprise Services Partnership website said no employees will lose their positions or see any changes in their compensation or benefits, but does not say anything regarding pay and benefits for future employees who will work under UK or the partner company.

Moon said UCW is an independent worker-run and worker-funded union and the views expressed at the rally are the employees’ own and not the views of the university.

Moon said UK leadership’s stressing that current employees will be unaffected is downplaying the impacts of their plans and new employees will not receive the same compensation or benefits as current employees.

”Under this plan, two custodians can do the same job, work the same eight hours, and only one of them will be able to afford to see the specialist they need at a UK hospital,” Moon said. “The other will not, and the only reason will be the date they were hired. That’s not innovation, that’s inequality.”

In a statement, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said neither initiative will cause current employees to lose their jobs and no employee involved in Integrate Blue has received a cut in pay or benefits.

“Like many public research universities, UK is facing increasing financial, regulatory and operational pressures. These integration efforts — Integrate Blue and the Enterprise Services Partnership — are about aligning similar work across the institution to reduce duplication, manage risk and deliver more consistent, high-quality services while staying focused on our mission to advance Kentucky,” Blanton said. “Our people are at the center of this work. All UK employees keep their jobs, pay and benefits, and no positions are being eliminated as part of these integration efforts. In many cases, the work remains largely the same, with support from HR to ensure transitions are thoughtful and orderly.”

Moon and others in attendance at the rally wore pins saying “No reassignments, no privatization.” Alongside other speakers were forms to sign up to join UCW and to sign a petition urging UK’s administration not to pursue the Enterprise Services Partnership along with the Integrate Blue initiative.

Scott Zurkuhlen, who has been a UK employee in the grounds department for about eight years, said he came to the rally to speak out against UK’s plans to outsource jobs.

Zurkuhlen said UK’s proposed 30-year contract would affect up to 1,200 workers, and while UK promised current employees would keep their jobs and pay, the workers hired under the new contract will not be UK employees and the contract functions to reduce labor costs and replace the existing employees.

”It’s a mass layoff in slow motion,” Zurkuhlen said. 

Zurkuhlen and a number of speakers after him said they do not know anybody at UK who supports the implementation of the contract.

Many of UK’s employees are people living in and around Lexington, Zurkuhlen said. UK has offered benefits that are extremely valuable to its employees, like its employee education program, its healthcare benefits and its retirement plans, but future employees may not get to have those opportunities under Integrate Blue and the proposed contract.

“I would say to them that this partnership looks a lot like a divestment from your community,” Zurkuhlen said. “It’s a political choice to prioritize the bottom line over good jobs for the entire community that a land-grant public university serves.”

UK’s LLC Beyond Blue was founded in 2013 and has already been impacting UK employees, similar to the reorganizational efforts behind Integrate Blue.

Robby Hardesty is a communications officer at UK libraries and has worked with the marketing and communications team for four years. He said in September 2025, his team would no longer be working for the libraries and would be centralized and moved to Beyond Blue in 2027.

Hardesty said his team has been left in the dark as to how their work would change and who their new bosses will be. He said hundreds of marketing communications and IT employees will be moved out of their departments to create one centrally managed unit in the name of efficiency.

“Librarians, archivists, the staff members whose services and resources I promote depend on me and my team to have highly particular, in-depth knowledge of the library and how it works. We are a vital part of the library’s operation,” Hardesty said.

Writing for departments that the communications employees are not connected to and have no knowledge of, Hardesty said, will not produce the same high- quality communication the employees have put out in the past.

Additionally, Hardesty said, UK has been embracing the use of AI in its writing to standardize UK’s institutional voice and have greater control over its messaging. He said the changes would depersonalize him from his work and stifle his creativity.

”Depersonalization and dehumanization. This is the pathway to corporatized higher education,” Hardesty said. “These degradations will be immediately felt by everyone who relies on teams like mine to do their jobs. It will be felt by students who will not grow wiser, healthier and wealthier by being fed slop.”

Along with a number of UK employees, Lexington city councilwomen Emma Curtis and Amy Beasley attended the rally.

Curtis said she was a UK employee in the past and workers used to have more of a say in the direction of their departments and the university as a whole.

“As we’ve seen through this collaboration with the outside firm Deloitte that led to the dissolution of the university’s (faculty) senate, the university is straying further and further away from being an institution that centers students and workers,” Curtis said.

The university’s actions to lessen the voice of staff, Curtis said, shows UK is prioritizing privatisation and profit over its commitments to students and staff.

Curtis said during a time in which UK is facing a student housing crisis, the university is prioritizing the funding of a small group of people, like outgoing athletics director Mitch Barnhart, who will receive an annual salary of $950,000 through Aug 31, 2030, according to former Kentucky Kernel reporting.

”Simply put, this action makes it more difficult to live, work and thrive in the city of Lexington,” Curtis said. “It doesn’t reflect our city’s values, it doesn’t reflect our people’s values. Lexington deserves better than another betrayal from the University of Kentucky.”

Lindsay Travis, director of crisis and issues communications at UK, said the university is committed to treating employees with transparency, respect and care.

“We encourage anyone with questions or concerns to share them directly with us so we can address them with accurate information and continued dialogue,” Travis said.

Anyone with questions or concerns about Integrate Blue can email [email protected].

Anyone with questions or concerns about the Enterprise Services Partnership can email [email protected].

Editor’s Note: This article has been amended to include UK’s perspective, adding a statement from UK spokesperson Jay Blanton along with additional information regarding the Enterprise Services Partnership and that current UK employees retain their jobs, pay and benefits.