K-SWOC Post-Strike Message to the Community
Dear Members of the Board of Trustees, Senior Administrators, and the Kenyon community,
We hope you all have had a restful spring break. Now that we have had a chance to assess the results of the March 3 one-day strike against unfair labor practices, related to the administration’s decision to unilaterally disband the Farm residency program, we would like to highlight certain aspects of it:
This strike involved over 200 student workers who walked off their jobs in solidarity with student workers at the Kenyon Farm. This is the largest student worker strike that has taken place at Kenyon, exceeding the numbers of striking student workers in last year’s actions at Kenyon; 126 student workers struck for one day in March 2021, and over 170 struck for two weeks in April of that year.
Not only did more student workers strike on March 3 than in the past, more workplaces saw a majority of their student workers join this strike than was the case in last year’s strikes. Notably, a majority of student workers in workplaces including Community Advisors, Apprentice Teachers, LBIS, Horn Gallery, Gund Gallery, Wright Center, Greenhouse and more, ultimately chose to strike in solidarity with the unanimous Farmers on March 3rd.
This strike was also the largest strike of its kind by private-sector undergraduate-only student workers anywhere in the country. This is partly because other colleges and universities have not aggressively resisted the efforts of their student workers to choose to form a union in a free and fair election. Every institution at which undergraduate student workers have organized in the time that Kenyon student workers have been organizing has allowed for either voluntary recognition or a stipulated election agreement, both of which K-SWOC has asked for.
Grinnell College this month chose to sign a neutrality agreement with the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGDSW), allowing a wall-to-wall election for UGDSW to expand to represent nearly all Grinnell student workers.
Dartmouth College this year agreed to a stipulated NLRB union election for its dining hall student workers, who are presently voting in their election by mail ballot.
Hamilton College, while strongly opposing student worker unionization, also signed a stipulated election agreement last fall that allowed their Admissions Tour Guides and Senior Fellows to vote to unionize, an election which the student workers won.
Wesleyan University just this month agreed to voluntarily recognize a union of undergraduate RAs after being presented with a majority of signed union cards — which is the original request K-SWOC/UE made of the Kenyon Board of Trustees on August 31, 2020.
Strikes are not pleasant for anyone. They only occur when the employer refuses to work with their employees as equals to reach compromises that meet the interests of both parties involved. Kenyon remains the exception among its peer institutions in not seeking such agreements, whether that be voluntary recognition, a neutrality agreement, or a stipulated election agreement. It is the only college or university in the nation challenging the labor protections and rights of all student workers at every private institution in the United States — and spending significant school resources, to the tune of $950 an hour per partner, to do so. Consequently, it is the only institution of higher learning where undergraduate student workers have needed to strike.
There are three fundamental truths about our union that the March 3 strike reveals:
K-SWOC is not going away; in the words of our allies in the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth (SWCD), “the union is here to stay.” We will continue fighting for a free and fair union election in which all student workers have a vote. Met with indifference and opposition from the Trustees and senior administrators, we will persevere and, as these numbers indicate, continue gaining strength.
We will stand up for each other. One lesson of the March 3 strike is that student workers across campus, and in large numbers, are willing to fight for the rights of our fellow workers in any workplace. In this case it was the Farm; in the future it may be in another workplace. An injustice done to any of us is an injustice done to us all.
We do not rule out the possibility of future strikes in response to the mistreatment of student workers. We do not want to strike again. We did not want to strike the previous three times. We reiterate in this message that we want to work with the Trustees and senior administration to hold a union election in which each student worker has the right to vote. We will not, however, back down from our commitment to the principles of workplace democracy in which all student workers have a say that cannot be ignored in the conditions of their employment. Top-down decision making that ignores the concerns, needs, and ideas of student workers, and any worker on campus, and negatively affects workers is something we cannot accept.
If you have any questions about what we stand for, about why we fight, we urge you to talk with us by contacting us at union@kswoc.org or filling out our office hours form.
Sincerely,
The members of Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K-SWOC/UE)