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Kenyon student workers are on strike and need your help

Students holding signs

The Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee has been fighting for improved working conditions on Kenyon’s campus for the better part of 2 years and Kenyon College is quietly at the forefront of union-busting amongst the higher-education community, spending thousands of dollars an hour to take away the rights of its undergraduate student workers with implications for undergraduate and graduate workers nationwide.

This past October, two-thirds of student workers filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in the hopes of holding an election on Kenyon’s campus to form a wall-to-wall union. How did Kenyon’s administration respond? By hiring two lawyers from notorious anti-union law firm Jones Day to indefinitely delay the rights of student workers to vote in such an election. Those lawyers each make at least $950/hour to deprive student workers of their rights, while student workers themselves work for between $9.30 and $11.94/hour. In the absence of a union, Kenyon’s administration has exercised its powers to force through harmful, unilateral changes to student workplaces, commit wage theft against its frontline workers, and retaliate against student workers who advocated for union protections. Five months later, Kenyon's administration continues to block the student workers’ election.

As Kenyon fights its own student workers tooth and nail, other colleges around the country have treated their student workers with dignity and respect. 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.

Through all this, student workers have stood up for one another, and they continue to give me hope for the future of this community. When the administration unilaterally terminated the Kenyon Farmers’ signature residential program, over 200 workers participated in a 24-hour strike in solidarity with the nine workers the Kenyon Farm currently employs.

When writing consultants, Gund Gallery associates, and Teaching Assistants for language classes have gone on strike in the past, they did so because they knew without a union contract that preserves their jobs, this administration will continue to cut budgets until students are left with nothing but shadows of once-robust campus institutions. When farmers prepare to strike, they think of the land they till and the animals they provide for, and how a union contract will enable them to enact their vision of a more perfect campus resource. When Community Advisors prepare to strike, they do so not only for their own protection but also for the sake of their residents, who they are increasingly forced to police and surveil by the Office of Residential Life.

Kenyon student workers are on strike and need your help to protest unfair labor practices and win the union student workers deserve this semester.

What you can do to help: