(C) Minnesota Reformer
This story was originally published by Minnesota Reformer and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
1,100 Macalester student workers unionize in first for Minnesota • Minnesota Reformer [1]
['Max Nesterak', 'More From Author', '- February', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width']
Date: 2025-02-27
Macalester student workers voted overwhelmingly to unionize, forming the first undergraduate student worker union in Minnesota.
The election was one of the largest in the Minnesota private sector in at least the past 25 years, according to the National Labor Relations Board’s online database, with around 1,100 student workers across campus eligible to vote.
Officials from the NLRB tallied the ballots cast over two days in the college library on Wednesday evening, announcing the results to cheers from about a dozen students: 406 in favor and 61 against.
“We put our hearts and souls into this … I’m in disbelief” said union organizer Eliot Berk, a junior biology major who works part-time as an office assistant at the Olin-Rice Science Center.
Berk and the other students then ran out of the library to share the news with their fellow union organizers who were stuck in class, shouting to the students at the check-out desk, “You have a union.”
The campaign to form the independent Macalester’s Undergraduate Worker’s Union began more than two years ago with a group of dining hall workers. The effort grew to include all on-campus students but hit a stumbling block when organizers failed to gather enough signatures for an election before summer break last year and had to start again in the fall.
Student worker unions have been gaining momentum over the past decade. There are at least 150 graduate student unions across the country, including at the University of Minnesota, where around 4,000 graduate student workers unionized in 2023.
Undergraduate student worker unions are far less common but are growing in number, from similar small liberal arts colleges like Grinnell College in Iowa to the entire California State University system.
Macalester union organizers say they hope to push pay above St. Paul’s minimum wage of $15.97 per hour and seek better training, higher staffing levels in the dining hall and more consistency across supervisors.
“What I’m really excited about (is) I think the union will bring a sense of community and togetherness among student workers,” said Ava Ortiz, a sophomore library assistant.
A Macalester spokesperson said the college “plans to proceed in good faith into collective bargaining with the elected leadership of the union.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/02/27/1100-macalester-student-workers-unionize-in-first-for-minnesota/
Published and (C) by Minnesota Reformer
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/MnReformer/
