Student Workers of the World, Unite!

On Monday, May 9, the Mississippi Freedom Writers organized a presentation entitled Student and Immigrant Labor Organizing: Context in the U.S. and Brazil, held in Filene auditorium. It was led by two founding members, whom I will not be naming for the sake of their privacy, of the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth (SWCD), the student union that recently won recognition and now represents all student workers under Dartmouth Dining Services. The event featured three panelists: Leena Yumeen, an undergraduate at Columbia; Juliana Morais de Goes, a graduate student at Amherst; and Rohma Khan, a Research Fellow at the non-profit organization One Fair Wage.

First, a note on the Mississippi Freedom Writers: I am not entirely sure what this organization is. I have not found anything about them online apart from the role they played in organizing this event. I assume they are an unrelated student organization that shares membership with the SWCD. Forgive my being presumptuous.

The event drew a commendable turnout and filled about half the auditorium, mostly with undergraduate students. I could not say just what proportion of these attendees came primarily or exclusively for the free Boloco burritos promised (and delivered) by the Freedom Writers, though students certainly seemed attentive, regardless of what initially enticed them to appear. The ListServ email advertising the event requested everyone bring a mask, which we at The Review found amusing, though I was somewhat surprised to see that almost nobody in attendance wore theirs.

The panelists were striking in their own right. Khan received her PhD from Rochester, studying immigration and labor history, particularly of South Asian immigrants in New York. One Fair Wage, where she is a Fellow, is a nonprofit that aims to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers in America.

De Goes attended the event via Zoom from Brazil, where she is currently living and researching. She is conducting her graduate research in sociology, studying how the urban organization efforts of Afro-Brazilians function differently from traditionally Western methods of organizing, funded by a grant from the Social Science Research Council.

Yumeen got her start in leftist leadership during the pandemic, which she spent at home in Miami. There, she organized local Black Lives Matter protests, following the wave of racial justice activism sweeping the country that summer. Then, she helped lead the Columbia tuition strike that occurred in January of 2021, protesting high financial burdens in spite of the pandemic along with over 1,000 other students. She is currently a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s National Coordinating Committee and an editorial intern at Jacobin magazine. 

It was through these last positions that she came into contact with student labor organizers at Dartmouth. Yumeen had been aware of the plans for unionization thanks to her communication with the Dartmouth chapter of the YDSA. When the request for voluntary recognition had been formally submitted to Dartmouth by the Student Worker Collective, Yumeen conducted an interview with student organizers, which was published in Jacobin and brought national attention to SWCD’s struggle.

The most relevant part of the event came during the discussion of the history of the SWCD and its goals as a union, as told by its members. The student organizers of the event locate their own struggle for unionization as part of a larger wave of union interest across America.

Organized labor has not been popular in the United States for a long time, arguably reaching its height in the early twentieth century and falling off after the Second World War, especially during the Red Scare. At that time, American propaganda machines successfully associated unionization with Bolshevism, making participation in a union unpatriotic. De Goes noted that, even in very recent history, organized labor has come under heavy pressure from the government, following the 2017 reform bills. 

The climate seems to be shifting, however; there were 366 reported strikes in America in the first six months of 2021 alone. Stories of struggles for union recognition from megacorporations like Amazon and Starbucks receive nationwide attention and sympathy. Following a surge of localized unionization efforts, Starbucks Corporate now finds itself facing down 50 successfully unionized locations representing 1443 employees, with 234 more stores planning to vote on unionization in the coming weeks and only 1 vote failing so far.

SWCD also cited recent organization and unionization efforts in other undergraduate institutions, including not only Columbia, as discussed previously, but also Wesleyan, Kenyon, and Grinnell. 

Possibilities for a Dartmouth student union began emerging in the Fall quarter of 2021, when freshman student workers, experienced in organizing and undaunted by the Dartmouth Administration, began talking to older students about working conditions at DDS locations. As an aside, it is not unusual for leadership of a labor organization movement to be younger; the average age of an Amazon union organizer is 26. Perhaps older students had become jaded by poor working conditions, or had accepted them as Dartmouth’s status quo.

Regardless, all were in agreement about their collective dissatisfaction with their treatment under Dartmouth Dining Services. Cited among the list of grievances were a lack of safety concerns and sick pay regarding COVID-19, omnipresent logistical chaos at DDS locations, particularly Novack Café, and a general feeling of change being impossible. Many felt that managerial staff had been dismissive of their complaints in the past.

After gathering a sense of the sentiments of DDS student workers and establishing support, the SWCD sent a letter to Dartmouth College requesting voluntary recognition of the union and collected the signatures of 80% of student employees expressing an intent to unionize. The College rejected the appeal for voluntary recognition, writing, “After research and consultation, we have concluded that a determination of whether your organization has majority status among employees in an appropriate bargaining unit should be made in accordance with the representation procedures of the National Labor Relations Board.” However, the College did agree to help facilitate a “free and fair election” and promised to work with the burgeoning union to ensure this process was “streamlined.”

Despite the fact that their request for voluntary recognition was denied, the SWCD did win some immediate benefits, including a temporary pay increase to $21/hour and guaranteed COVID sick pay. Why? According to SWCD leadership: “Because they’re scared of us.”

On the 30th of March of this year, student workers under DDS voted unanimously to unionize, 52-0, and the SWCD became an officially recognized undergraduate union.

However, the struggle doesn’t end here for the SWCD. Members are a continual presence in campus activism. At the presentation, leadership presented a number of contract demands for which they will continue to fight, which include “Permanent $21/hr pay, generalized sick pay, mental health time off, maintenance of machines and tools, no changes in workload without consultation with workers, free dining plan, more pay for harder shifts,” and the recognition of area managers as workers.

Currently, the SWCD only represents student workers for DDS; if you are one of these student workers, you can apply for membership on their website. They are hoping to expand the union to other student workers at Dartmouth, and students employed by the College but not working for DDS are encouraged to reach out to the SWCD via their website to express interest. Support is, of course, welcomed by the SWCD from students not employed by the College, as well as from other community members; they encourage their allies to aid in their struggle for demands by showing up at rallies and picketing alongside student workers.

This spring, the SWCD became the fifth undergraduate student worker union in the country, and it immediately won a number of victories. The SWCD hopes these initial successes are only the first in a string of victories to come.