The arena for the fight for the future college student unionization is set: Clark University.
It is no exaggeration to say that Clark University wants to take away our rights. Clark wants to eliminate the right that student-workers enjoy to unionize their workplace. Clark does not believe student workers perform labor. Clark thinks that taking out the trash is simply something we do for our education.
In regard to a recent petition for unionization filed by undergraduate student workers, Clark University has taken a strong stance. Their stance is not only against a student union here at Clark, but also against student unions throughout the United States. Tens of thousands of workers enjoy these protections, here at Clark, as well as undergraduate and graduate students throughout the country. Clark wants to dismantle the whole system.
Through unionization, students hope to secure better pay, stable hours, and safer working conditions. Clark student-workers are paid well below market rate, most making minimum wage. Student-worker hours have been slashed nearly across the board, with hours promised in job postings rarely being fulfilled. Despite many student workers having to work outside in sub-zero conditions, Clark student workers are provided no safety equipment. Collective bargaining through unionization would force the university to right these wrongs.
In the University lawyer’s official response to the Petition for Unionization filed by Teamsters Local 170, Lawyer Damien M. DiGiovanni stated:
“It is Clark University’s position that students, and most undoubtedly undergraduate students, are primarily students. As such, some or all of the students in the Petitioned-for unit are not statutory employees under Section 2(3) of the Act.
Even if some or all of the students listed in the Petition are Section 2(3) employees, they do not constitute an appropriate unit for collective bargaining, pursuant to the Board’s holding in San Francisco Art Institute, 226 NLRB 1251 (1976), and similar Board precedent, which was wrongly overturned in 2016.”
This is blatant. They do not think that we are employees, and crucially, they believe that a 2016 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that allowed all student workers to unionize was wrongly decided.
They intend to utilize an anti-labor federal government (to whom the NLRB are accountable) to reverse pro-labor precedent and strip unionization rights away from not only Clark student-workers, but all undergraduate and graduate student-workers across the United States. This would affect tens of thousands of currently unionized students, and millions of student-workers yet to unionize.
An undergraduate student-worker union is needed at Clark, and despite admin’s attempts to stop it, it will come. We are not done.
Whether we want to be or not, we are the vanguard. If we must be the ones to take this fight, so be it.
