The Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (USGDW) may no longer be in the national news, but they’re still making efforts to be noticed by students and College administrators. It is now the eighth month after The Board of Trustees decision to delay a vote on partial expansion of the Union, and student workers met outside Nollen House earlier this week to chant, listen to USGDW speakers and sing labor-rights anthems like Pete Seeger’s “Solidarity Forever.”
It is unknown whether any administrators were in the building at the time of the protests.
Among others, the speakers included USGDW executive board member Ryland Rich ’22, Sofi Carr ’22, Keir Hichens ’22, USGDW Member at Large Paige Oamek ’21 and USGDW President Sam Xu ’20.
Most speakers’ remarks focused on their perception that there is a disconnect between Grinnell’s social-justice-oriented advertising to prospective students and the continued resistance of the school to partial expansion of the Union.
Several speakers noted that the current wage structure at the College makes it so that students who depend on income from campus jobs may be forced to choose a higher-paying job in the Dining Hall—the only unionized student position on campus—over a lower-paying job in a discipline more relevant to their field of study or intended profession.
Partial expansion of the Union would permit the USGDW to bargain for students working in a specified set of “non-academic” positions on campus. The partial plan was a compromise created after the College and the USGDW came close to going head-to-head in front of the National Labor Relations Board over a student vote that happened last year in favor of full union expansion. Once the compromise was reached, the Trustees never set an official date to make a decision on partial expansion, and the issue has been in committee since May.
Although the crowd was primarily made up of Dining workers, USGDW executive board members and students hoping for their campus positions to become unionized under partial expansion, several students who work outside of the range of jobs with potential for unionization also attended to show their support. Tommy Hexter ’21 is one of those students. Even if his job as a math department grader could be eligible for collective bargaining, he doesn’t think he’d use it for that position. “I’m just an ally,” he said. “I mainly just think it’s cool that a group of students get together to fight institutional power. I come to a lot of the rallies.”
Ryland Rich has noticed a growing base of first and second-year volunteers and rally attendees this semester. “We’re trying to engage that base more, rather than just the people that come to meetings,” she said.
David Maxwell, head of the Board of Trustees, authored a letter sent out as a “Campus Update” regarding partial expansion on the morning of the day of the rally. In it, he announced that the Board would hold a “special meeting” of all Trustees at an off-campus location in order to discuss partial union expanion.
It is unclear if the timing of the email is related to the timing of the rally and the following meeting of the USGDW Executive Board. “If it’s a coincidence, it’s a strange one,” said Xu.
