Paul Chan Htoo Sang
Grinnell College students protest the school's appeal to the NLRB, which threatens their ability to engage in collective bargaining as student workers.
Grinnell College, a liberal arts school known for its vocal commitment to progressive politics, is appealing a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision which gives student workers at private colleges and universities the right to collectively bargain. The outcome could affect undergraduate and graduate workers across the country.
The Iowa college, which has a nearly two billion dollar endowment, argues that a decision by an NLRB regional director affirming the rights of these workers to organize “represents an extreme and wholly unjustifiable extension” of an earlier national ruling.
But Grinnell’s appeal, which seeks to overturn that earlier ruling, has brought the ire of labor advocates, as well as many students and alumni.
“It just seems so contrary to the values that the college prints in its brochures to be opposing the efforts of [dining workers in] the student union,” says Scott Olson, a 2015 alum who has campaigned to organize graduate students at the University of Iowa. “A lot of us have just been very saddened and dismayed to discover that the college isn’t willing to put its money where its mouth is.”
Olson has publicly supported the union’s unionization efforts. He was one of three alumni who co-wrote a December 3 op-ed published in the Des Moines Register. “If Grinnell College truly cares about social justice, it will respect its students, their election, and the results,” they wrote.
In 2016, student cafeteria workers founded the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers, the first independently organized undergraduate union in the United States. Since its creation, the union has pushed to include high school student workers and has negotiated a series of raises for student dining services workers.
“Student workers . . . deserve a collective and powerful say at the table,” says Sam Xu, a member of the union’s executive board.
But the dining workers union’s recent attempt to broaden its scope to cover all student workers has been met with resistance. As far back as April, the college stated that it would “oppose the intrusion of collective bargaining into the educational relationship.”
In a hearing arbitrated by Region 18 of the NLRB on October 17 and 18, the student union—without legal representation—argued its case for an election to expand the union. The regional NLRB ruled in favor of the union, and on November 27, 274 of the 366 student workers who cast ballots voted to broaden the scope of the union. Union leaders celebrated the overwhelming win but acknowledged in a press release that “the road ahead is a difficult one.”
“It just seems so contrary to the values that the college prints in its brochures.”
Just days after the election, the road turned rocky when the school announced plans to follow through on its appeal to the regional NLRB’s decision to the full national board, which under Trump has issued rulings hostile to unions. The college lawyered up, adding Proskauer Rose, a law firm with a history of combatting unions, to its legal arsenal.
The dispute is relevant not only to students at Grinnell, but to undergraduate and graduate student workers across the country.
According to the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, student unionization efforts are underway at twenty-four U.S. universities. Half of the universities listed are private, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Brown, meaning they could be affected if Grinnell’s appeal is successful.
In August 2016, the NLRB—then staffed with Obama appointees—ruled that resident assistants and teaching assistants at private colleges and universities counted as employees and were protected by the National Labor Relations Act. The decision, Columbia I, extended the right to collectively bargain to students across the United States.
Now, Grinnell College is basing its appeal to the NLRB on grounds that the 2016 ruling was incorrect. This gives Trump’s NLRB the chance to overturn Columbia I.
Sharyn Obsatz—who graduated from Grinnell in 1993 and currently serves on the executive board of Santa Monica College’s faculty union—is angered by the college’s decision to appeal to the conservative NLRB. “[Grinnell] is inviting Trump onto campus . . . and not just Grinnell’s campus, but university campuses across the country,” she says.
Grinnell’s legal position explicitly relies on the conservative makeup of the current board. In its motion to stop the union’s recent election, lawyers for the college highlighted the importance of the conservative board, writing in one motion that “since Columbia I was decided in August 2016, the Board’s composition has changed dramatically.”
In response to a request for comment on the potential consequences of its appeal, Grinnell spokeswoman Debra Lukehart passed along a statement arguing that including all student workers “would undermine the college’s core educational mission and culture.” The statement did not address the appeal’s wider political implications.
For its part, union leaders say they will continue to push for dialogue with the college—and to publicly protest the school’s position.
“[We] will not be scared off by Grinnell’s illegal threats, and the shady tactics of its union-busting lawyers,” the union said in December 11 statement. “We will continue to agitate and organize to convince the Grinnell administration to respect students’ democratic decision and come to the bargaining table.”