Undergraduate Student Workers: We Unionized. You Can, Too.
This spring, undergraduate student workers at Wesleyan University in Connecticut became the US's first known undergrad labor union to win voluntary recognition. With sustained organizing, student workers on campuses across the country can follow suit.
WesUSE’s launch rally with 200+ attendees, along with a massive inflatable pig supplied by Connecticut Building Trades Council. (Courtesy of WesUSE)
On March 3, student workers at the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) at Wesleyan University announced their intent to unionize. Within four days of taking the campaign public, the union signed a card-check agreement with university administration. On March 22, with 84 percent of the bargaining unit having signed union cards, the Wesleyan Union of Student Employees (WesUSE) became the first known undergraduate labor union in the country to win voluntary recognition.
WesUSE’s victory is only one in a current wave of undergraduate student worker organizing, and follows in the steps of unionization campaigns at UMass Amherst, Grinnell College, Columbia University, Hamilton College, and Kenyon College. As the Wesleyan case shows, these victories are not spontaneous. They’re the fruit of years of sustained and strategic organizing, and their successes can be replicated on campuses across the country.
Conditions on the Ground
Wesleyan labor organizing benefits from a long history of student radicalism at the university. United Student Labor/Action Coalition (USLAC), a group formed out of Wesleyan students in AFL-CIO’s first Union Summer program, has channeled student energy toward labor since the 1990s, playing an instrumental role in unionizing Wesleyan custodial staff in 1999. Since then, USLAC has fought alongside custodial, dining hall, and physical plant workers, as well as the wide array of student workers who keep Wesleyan operational.
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