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The strike, backed by the powerful Teamsters union, is an early bet that strike action can overcome Trump-administration backtracking on the rights of student-workers.
Undergraduates, Teamsters Launch Strike Action
WORCESTER, MA – As of Thursday March 13th, 6am, Clark University undergraduate workers have gone on strike, demanding the university agree to their request for card check neutrality. Card check neutrality is a legal agreement between the union local and the management to have a neutral third-party check the list of workers in the unit and match those names with union cards the workers signed; if a majority of the names of workers are card signers, a union is formed without an election. The group is organized under the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 170, the same unit that represents the Clark University Graduate Workers Union; CUGWU went on strike in April of 2022, winning its strike in five days. This undergraduate strike will be a 24-hour-a-day picket line over an indefinite length of time, at least running through this Saturday, March 15, which is Admitted Students Day.
The Clark campus was met with an armada of Teamsters trucks early Thursday morning– the trucks drawn from across the New England Jurisdiction of Teamsters, namely Locals 25, 170, 191, 340, 361, 671, and 1170, with more expected to follow. Staffers, organizers, and local presidents came out to show the IBT solidarity with the striking undergraduate workers. Despite it being 31 degrees and six in the morning, nearly fifty students and Teamsters lined Main Street.
Fighting For A Fair Contract
The organizing committee has outlined a few salient targets for a contract. Namely, these student workers hope to establish standardized undergraduate contract language across all departments, alleviating vast inconsistencies across a range of positions. Standardized pay increases for all workers, more guaranteed hours every week, safety precautions, support systems, and job security in the form of guaranteed positions are all top priorities. The latter, in particular, is of utmost importance for the labor pool at Clark. The modus operandi of the university’s administration and the Office of Student Employment has been to cut positions and downsize various low-staffed offices often and capriciously. For example, during the spring semester of 2024, the Human Resources office had five student assistant workers. By the fall semester of that year, that number had been cut down to a single position.
Bringing this group under a single collective bargaining agreement would build unity and collective power among the undergraduate workers. 620 workers is a sizable labor force, and unification across the departments would strengthen and amplify the negotiating power the workers hold. University administration would have to sit across the bargaining table against the collective will and agency of hundreds of workers together, which empowers organizing for larger and more consistent gains, whereas atomized departments may struggle against both management and one another for resources.
Cross Campus Solidarity
Since going public in January, the undergraduate workers have garnered massive solidarity from the Graduate Workers Union.
In a letter of support, CUGWU wrote, “We are excited for and proud of you coming together to seize a seat at the table and make your jobs and workplace secure, rewarding, and respectful for yourselves and your coworkers! … We are proud to stand beside you as you organize your union and we will be proud to have you by our sides as we begin our own next contract negotiation!”
A letter of support from faculty, too, read that, “It is our hope that by supporting the unionization effort, all students and faculty members will benefit from the fortification of our campus’ community and continue to uphold the values of Clark University. We could not be more proud that our undergraduates are working together and lifting each other up to unionize!”
The Fight Over Columbia
This strike was not the intended outcome for this group of workers. A month earlier, IBT Local 170 filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board(NLRB) for an official union election. However, that petition had to be rescinded due to the fear it would allow the Trump-controlled NLRB to overturn the 2016 Columbia precedent which holds that student workers are allowed collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Aact (NLRA).
Unions representing student worker groups have advocated against filing for elections and ULPs during Trump’s second term, because this would provide a case by-which a Trump-controlled NLRB could overturn the Columbia ruling, throwing back the legal protections for student-worker organizing. Nevertheless, IBT 170 – both the field organizers and the legal team – felt comfortable the Columbia precedent wouldn’t apply in this case, mainly because of the nature of work Clark undergraduate workers do for the university. Clark University evoked the Columbia Decision as a casualty that would come from the undergraduates filing for an election, and so the local and the organizing committee pivoted to a strike for card check neutrality.
Clark undergraduate workers do not solely hold academic positions, such as teaching and research assistantships, like is typical of unionized student workforces; most of the undergraduate workers at Clark hold non-academic positions, like trash collectors, administrative office workers, and IT workers. It is generally uncommon to staff such positions at a university with undergraduate students. Each department is separate from the rest, pay is not standardized across departments – discrepancies arise from different amounts of funding for each position – and assigned work hours fluctuate or are removed by management on a whim.
However, Clark University’s administration vehemently disagreed with this characterization of its workforce. In an email to his campus community, Clark’s president, David Fithian wrote, “The University believes that our undergraduate students are, first and foremost, students, who are at Clark primarily to study and learn. Therefore, they are not eligible for union representation.”
On top of this, during the meeting between IBT 170 officials and Clark Administrators and its lawyers, career-anti-union lawyer and Clark’s primary lawyer, Damien DiGiovanni, proclaimed that, were this petition to remain filed, Clark University would appeal it as high up in the court circuit as it needed to be, and specifically announced it would be the university’s position to try to appeal the Columbia Decision. DiGiovanni would be thrilled to be the lawyer whose name is attached to overturning Columbia; he boasts about defending a charter school for firing the primary organizer of a unionization campaign.
University Hypocrisy Under Trump 2.0
This example of Clark University directly siding with the Trump Administration is another instance of the hypocritical stance of “Institutional Neutrality” the university’s administration has taken recently. Clark University’s motto is “Challenge Convention; Change our World.” The advertising message of the university is that the institution is predicated on social justice and a deep commitment to community. However, when it comes time to put that motto into practice, the university’s attitude quickly changes.
In 2024, the Clark University Student Council put forth a referendum to gauge support of Clark students for amending university endowments in accordance to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement against the state of Israel’s commitment of genocide and maintenance of ethnic apartheid. The referendum passed at a monumental 86% approval for the call for divestment. However, the Board of Trustees refuses to reallocate investments, stating that its endowments are not to be used to make political statements.
More recently, Clark’s administration has slashed the university’s Office for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. It has also gone on the record stating that it will comply with all Federal policy covering ICE and immigration raids, and that the university will not be an immigration safe-haven.
A new unit of organized student workers at Clark shows management that the workers they exploit are constantly building power and are willing to take a stand against any form of injustice; collective bargaining agreements as nearby as at Worcester Polytechnic Institute include language around protecting international student workers from hostile federal agencies.
Give up… or Strike!
This strike and the fight attached to it is bigger than Clark University, and represents a larger struggle within Higher Education.
“Give up or strike.” This is the choice which Clark Administrators, and through them the Trump administration, have forced upon organizing workers in higher ed.
If we fear doing any sort of advocacy work within the NLRB in fear of allowing Columbia to be overturned, it sets the ground for universities to block and roll back organized labor on campus, leaving unions paralyzed, so long as they stick within the confines of the system of collective bargaining laid out by the NLRA. .
The Clark undergraduate workers are reminding their administrators that labor has its own system for sorting out disputes between the workers and the boss — the strike.
But the Clark undergraduate workers are reminding their administrators that labor has its own system for sorting out disputes between the workers and the boss — the strike. If the Clark undergraduate workers win, they will show that any move to overturn the rights gained from Columbia is just ink and paper in the face of a united and militant campus workforce.
We will no longer be burned by the petty dictatorship that are higher education administration. This strike continues to set the precedent that the power is in the hands of the workers, and will not be subservient to the managerial class. Higher education exists to make commodities of its students, and more specifically, its student workers, and this is them beginning to shed the shackles.
A chant heard on campus today lays it out more simply,
“We are the Teamsters! And if they forget it, they’ll live to regret it.”
Ezra Schwerner is a Worcester DSA member and a student organizer at Clark University.
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