Cornell University workers are approaching a week of being on strike.
Members of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2300—the people who keep the dining halls, world-class research facilities, and idyllic campus running every day—decided on the night of August 18 that they had had enough. Months of heated bargaining sessions had come to an impasse, and members—who include about 1,300 dining staff, custodians, groundskeepers, and other frontline workers—had voted overwhelmingly a few days earlier to authorize a strike. They had been working without a contract since July, and the university had rejected the union’s demands for livable wages.
“They have every opportunity to take us out of poverty wages,” said bargaining representative Amy Kloc in an announcement on the union’s website. “To date, they have refused. As a result, we are taking a job action against them.”
(Note: the author is a postdoctoral associate at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations who has participated in union solidarity activities on campus.)
The contrast between workers’ day-to-day economic struggles and Cornell’s elite reputation as an Ivy League institution was evident at a picketing site the following Monday: A small crowd of workers chanted and marched with UAW signs at an intersection near the administration’s headquarters. Periodic cheers and honks of support from passersby rang out against a backdrop of stately gothic and modern buildings named after wealthy donors, while high-achieving freshmen moved into their dorms to start an education priced at about $70,000 a year.
Shawn Nichols, a campus gardener struggling to raise three kids on his Cornell salary, says the administration should understand that “what we do is truly essential. As a Cornell employee, they call us ‘essential.’ I mean, they don’t treat us as essential . . . . People need to live without having to be on food stamps.”
Kelly Tracy, who has been a food service worker at Cornell for eighteen years, recalls, “When I first started here, Cornell was a great school to work for. I knew that I’d be set, because I’m a single mom and I only have myself to rely on for income coming in for my family. And it’s been getting worse and worse as the years have gone by, and ever since COVID especially, it’s been terrible. And they won’t budge.”
The union has demanded pay increases that align with the living-wage standard for surrounding Tompkins County, about $25 per hour for an adult with no children, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. The union says most of its members earn less than $22 an hour. The union is also pushing for an end to a tiered wage system that places newer hires on a lower payscale, longevity-based bonuses for longtime employees, and free campus parking for workers.
To meet the living-wage benchmark, the union initially called for overall incremental raises totaling about 45 percent over the four-year contract, while the university offered raises of about 17.5 percent compounded over four years. During the strike, according to the union, the administration has adjusted its proposal up a couple of percentage points and the union, perhaps inching closer to a settlement, has countered with the demand made just before the strike, for a 25 percent raise over four years. Just before the strike, the administration offered to meet one of the union’s key demands, a cost-of-living adjustment so wages would automatically rise with inflation. For the union, Cornell’s offer still failed to address workers’ core concerns. On Wednesday, the Department of Human Resources requested that the union “use a mediator, or other conflict resolution process” to come to a settlement, but as of Friday, the talks seem to remain at an impasse.
Beyond compensation, another issue in the contract talks is workplace safety: Last year, an accident involving machinery at a campus dining hall resulted in a worker losing several fingers and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines of more than $43,000. Cornell is contesting the citations.
In the lead-up to the strike, the bargaining team criticized the administration for taking a “hostile and abusive tone” and had filed Unfair Labor Practice charges claiming the university had illegally retaliated or discriminated against members for engaging in organizing activity. Their disgust at the administration’s attempt to “polish a turd” was colored by the fact that the university has a $10 billion endowment and top administrators rake in seven-digit salaries.
The administration contends that it has offered “a historic” raise, and that its use of its endowment is restricted, often channeled to expenditures such as research and student financial aid, rather than labor costs.
But Cornell, as Ithaca’s dominant employer, is at the center of the intensifying inequality within the university’s workforce and the surrounding community. While it pays unlivable wages to its workers, the institution avoids paying tens of millions in taxes each year thanks to its nonprofit status. Meanwhile, the student population is partially blamed for gentrification in Ithaca, which is driving up the city’s housing costs.
“They don’t care,” says Jim, a building-care worker who has been with Cornell for about twelve years. “If they cared, we wouldn’t be out here.” Sitting at a picketing site by the campus welcome center, flanked by faculty who had turned out to express solidarity (full disclosure: The author was one of them), Jim—who did not want to give his full name—told me he’s uncertain about the ultimate impact of the strike. But he’s holding out on the picket line because “no person that works at Cornell University should have to work two jobs to make ends meet.”
Local 2300 has not gone on strike since the 1980s, so the strikers have typically never organized at this scale, nor has the current administration ever had to deal with a campus-wide work stoppage. The administration has issued calls for non-union staff and retirees to work as temporary replacement workers, prompting criticism of scabbing. Jim noted a few of his coworkers had crossed the picket line. He said he could manage on strike pay—about $500 weekly—because his kids are grown up and he can cover his bills. Still, many others in more dire financial straits may find it harder to stay off the job as the strike drags on. But the administration might come under strain as well, he said, if “the parents and the students start complaining” about the lack of dining services and dorms going uncleaned. “Nobody complains until they’re being affected.”
Public shaming might add more pressure. Last Monday, at the Democratic National Convention, UAW President Shawn Fain mentioned the Cornell strike, calling out the university as an exemplar of corporate greed. Fain’s sharp words reflect a change in UAW’s leadership since reformers took the helm and led a cascade of auto worker strikes across the country last year. Some of the Local 2300 members noted a cultural shift at the local level, too, with more grassroots energy emerging from new rank-and-file members.
The overarching atmosphere on campus, meanwhile, has recently grown more politically charged. Late last year, graduate workers unionized with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a milestone in a decades-long struggle to organize graduate students at private institutions nationwide. In the spring, students protesters clashed with the administration over a pro-Palestinian encampment. Students also led pro-labor campus protests in 2023 after Starbucks moved to close all three of Ithaca’s unionized locations. The current strike might be another campaign that weaves together labor and social justice struggles on campus.
Tracy says she wants Cornellians to realize that “we didn’t want to do this to the students. We really didn’t. I love my students. I have great relationships with them, but we didn’t have a choice. And everyone that I’ve spoken to is behind us, including the students.”
The picket line is a lesson in what a university community’s priorities should be. “This is monumental,” she says. “And I’m proud to be a part of something bigger than myself and just fighting for everybody. People that don’t have a voice. I will be their voice.”
Editor's Note: After this article was published, the strike at Cornell was settled. The author provides the following update as of September 3, 2024:
The Cornell University campus workers’ union, United Auto Workers Local 2300, has a new contract and is going back to work after a two-week strike. The union’s bargaining team reached a tentative agreement last week and the members ratified the agreement on Labor Day, with a 77 percent yes vote. The new contract will raise workers’ wages by about 21 percent to 25.4 percent over four years, with an 8.9 percent raise in the first year. Additionally, a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will automatically be applied if a future spike in inflation eats into workers’ take-home pay.
The new contract also includes targeted payments aimed at ending “tiers” (lower pay scales on which some more recently hired workers were placed) and adds “longevity” bonuses for more senior workers at five-year increments. The gains on wages, tiers, and COLA in the contract are similar to, but in some cases more limited than, the features of the landmark contracts that the UAW secured for the “Big Three” auto workers after last year’s “Stand Up” strike.
The scheduled raises are lower than the union’s initial demand, which would have hiked workers’ overall pay by more than 40 percent. And despite the increased pay, the starting wage for some jobs would still be less than the estimated living wage standard for the county, for service and maintenance workers who are often struggling to cover their basic needs under Tompkins County’s largest, richest (and tax-exempt) employer. But the total compensation package represents a significant increase from the previous contract—about $43 million in wage and benefit investment over four years, according to the union, compared to just $11 million over three years under the previous two contracts.
Speaking at a picketing site on campus on Saturday, the last weekend of the strike, two workers (who declined to give their names) were weighing the tentative agreement, still not sure how they would vote. But they were proud of what the union had accomplished, organizing its first strike in a generation. “I think it brought people together and the union has gotten a lot stronger from doing the strike,” said one worker. The strike, which had brought much of Cornell’s dining and maintenance operations to a halt right at the start of classes, was perhaps also a warning to the administration about how far the union was willing to go to advance its demands.
Backed by a new reform leadership at the national level, the local was reenergized under the leadership of 2300 President Christine Johnson in recent months and saw a surge of grassroots mobilization capped by an overwhelming vote for a strike. While the new contract does not meet all the original goals many members had rallied around, they proved their union is ready to keep fighting for what they know they deserve. As another worker put it, “Cornell knows we’re not playing games now.”