Kenyon College Language Teaching Assistants Join Community Advisors in Indefinite Strike

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Kenyon College Language Teaching Assistants Join Community Advisors in Indefinite Strike

April 13, 2022 (Gambier, Ohio)- A majority of Teaching Assistants (TA) in the Modern Languages and Literatures and Classics Departments at Kenyon College have joined Kenyon College Community Advisors (CA) in an indefinite unfair labor practice strike over coercive and retaliatory changes made to the CA position earlier this year. The Kenyon College MLL and Classics Departments lean heavily on TA instruction with intensive language courses requiring students to attend up to three TA courses per week. This majority of TAs includes supermajorities of Spanish, French, Arabic, and Classics TAs. 

In January, the Kenyon administration announced its intent to change compensation for the CA position from a wage system to a stipend system, declassifying CAs from their classification as statutory employees under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Under these changes, minimum wage and overtime regulations will no longer apply to CAs, nor will rights and protections related to collective organizing, including the right to unionize, under the NLRA. On April 10, 2022, the day prior to the beginning of the strike, an unfair labor practice charge was filed with Region 8 of the National Labor Relations Board regarding the changes, prompting an investigation into the changes and their relation to ongoing student worker organizing.

On March 3, 2022, a majority of Kenyon College Teaching Assistants participated in a one-day strike in solidarity with the Kenyon Farmers following the retaliatory disbandment of the Kenyon Farm’s residential program in what was the largest known undergraduate student labor strike. Last year, TAs led a two-week strike for union recognition following the rejection of a proposal for a community election on unionization. The strike was preceded by the implementation of a required unpaid training course designed to replace existing paid training for TAs. Student-workers at Kenyon College have been organizing with the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K-SWOC/UE) since March of 2020. Since then, Kenyon College has denied proposals for two different forms of voluntary recognition and is currently fighting K-SWOC’s petition for NLRB certification election and attempting to overturn the rights of undergraduate student workers at private institutions under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) altogether.

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