Grinnell student workers approve campuswide union; school's move to quash has national implications
Kathy A. Bolten- Grinnell College student workers voted to expand a union to include all student workers.
- College officials oppose the move and plan to appeal the validity of the election to a national labor board.
- The national board's decision will impact unions at other private colleges and universities.
Grinnell College students voted to expand unionization of student workers, but the move could be short-lived as the school tries to quash the unionization by appealing to a Republican-majority National Labor Relations Board.
If the Board rules with the school, it could end all student union drives at the nation's private universities and colleges.
On Tuesday, student workers voted overwhelmingly to expand the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers campuswide to include the school’s more than 700 student workers.
Grinnell officials said they will ask the National Labor Relations Board to overturn the vote. A former chairman of the national board said the college will likely prevail, and the board’s decision could erode unionization rights undergraduate and graduate students at private colleges and universities across the country.
The decision will “certainly impede and eliminate student organizing,” said William B. Gould IV, former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and a Stanford University law professor. “There will be no obligation for colleges and universities to bargain with student workers.”
In recent years, student worker unions have reached agreements with their schools’ administrators without involving the NLRB, Gould said.
That tactic preserved a 2016 decision by the then-Democrat-controlled labor board that ruled Columbia University’s student assistants were employees under the federal labor law. The 2016 decision allowed student workers at private universities to organize.
Organization of student work groups at public universities are governed by state bargaining laws.
Now that the labor board is controlled by Republicans, private institutions, like Grinnell, want the 2016 decision revisited.
Two years ago — after the national board’s Columbia decision — Grinnell students voted to form the dining workers union, becoming one of the nation’s only independent undergraduate student labor unions on a private college campus. Grinnell administrators bargained with the group, which succeeded in raising wages for dining workers.
Grinnell officials bring the issue to national labor board
Grinnell officials didn’t interfere with student workers organizing in 2016. This year, however, has been a different matter.
The college asked the NLRB’s regional director to block the election or impound the ballots after the election. The regional director, in early November, allowed the election to take place. The college appealed the decision to the full board; the student group asked the board to uphold the regional director’s decision.
The NLRB didn’t make a decision.
Now that the election is over, Grinnell wants the NLRB to declare the election void. In its brief appealing the regional director’s decision to allow the election, Grinnell argued that the board’s previous decisions regarding student workers were erroneous. Grinnell, in the brief, argued that student workers do not meet the National Labor Relations Act’s definition of “employee.”
In addition, Grinnell argued that continuing to allow student workers at private institutions to organize creates “tension, divisiveness and a fracturing of relations among students and faculty.”
School's objections could have national implications
Members of the student workers union said they understand the national implications if the NLRB sides with the college.
“Grinnell is not only rejecting our rights to unionize here on campus, but potentially jeopardizing the rights of hundreds of thousands of other undergraduates around the nation,” Nate Williams, a Grinnell student and union representative, told the Register.
Members of the union have called on the college to drop its opposition to the unionization of all student workers.
That’s not likely, college officials said.
Debra Lukehart, Grinnell’s vice president of communications, in a statement, wrote that officials believe expansion of the union would “undermine (Grinnell’s) core educational mission and culture, impede learning and diminish educational opportunities for students.”
Grinnell, a private liberal arts college with about 1,700 students, had $173.4 million in expenses in the year that ended June 30, 2017, the school’s 990 tax form shows. The school funds about half of its operating budget annually with its endowment, which totals more than $1.8 billion.
Less than 2 percent of expenses — about $2 million — is spent on student wages, briefs filed with the National Labor Relations Board show.
Quinn Ercolani, a junior who is president of the student worker union group, said the college can afford to pay student workers higher wages. He said he and others don’t understand why the school is fighting so hard against unionization.
“Grinnell is abandoning its mission for the sake of profit,” Ercolani said.
Alumni and students object to school's opposition
Some Grinnell alumni and current students have taken to social media posts to question why a college known for its liberal leanings opposes unionization. During Tuesday’s annual online giving day, some people noted that they weren’t supporting Grinnell financially this year because of the school’s stance on the expansion of the union.
Lukehart, in her statement, addressed those concerns.
“Given our values, it might seem that unionization of all student positions would fit naturally into Grinnell’s culture,” she wrote. Instead, expansion of the union would “undermine” Grinnell’s core educational mission and change the relationship between administrators, faculty and students by inserting priorities that are “economic, not educational, into learning outside the classroom.”
Grinnell officials expect to file an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board within the next couple weeks. The student group will have to respond and then the board will decide whether to hear the case. If it does, it could be several months before the issue is resolved, officials familiar with the process said.