Last Thursday, Feb. 19, approximately 25 student union members gathered at the flagpole outside of the Weyerhauser Memorial Chapel to deliver a petition demanding open bargaining to Macalester Vice President of Administration and Finance Patricia Langer’s office.
The petition, which was signed by 253 student workers and 155 other Macalester community members, including parents and alumni, demanded that the Macalester administration bargain with the Macalester Undergraduate Workers Union – United Auto Workers (MUWU-UAW) with general union members present. This practice is commonly referred to as “open bargaining.”
The petition was created in response to the bargaining session on Friday, Feb. 13, during which the Macalester administration declined to negotiate with MUWU-UAW due to general members’ presence in the bargaining session. The petition was distributed via email to student workers that weekend.
Maggie Costello* ’28, a member of MUWU-UAW’s bargaining committee, spoke to the crowd of students before the protest.
“We represent you, and you want to be there for the decision-making process,” Costello said. “It is our responsibility, and the responsibility of any democratic institution, which includes Macalester, to make sure that your needs and wants are heard.”
The group then headed to Langer’s office, where a member handed the petition to Sara Suelflow, chief of staff for the president and secretary to the board of trustees, as Langer was not present in her office at the time of the march.
“The real success of the day came down to how many signatures we could get,” Oskar Hafner-Orange ’28, a sound and light technician, member of MUWU-UAW and the student who handed the petition to Suelflow, said.
In his remarks to Suelflow, Hafner-Orange read aloud the petition and encouraged Macalester to stand by its democratic values in support of open bargaining.
The day following the protest, Friday, Feb. 20, Macalester administration remained committed to closed bargaining during their scheduled negotiations with the union. According to Langer, the college’s bargaining committee received the petition and considered it prior to the negotiation session, but maintained its position that closed bargaining is a democratic process.
“Democracy in collective bargaining is exercised through bargaining representatives,” Langer wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “Student workers have chosen their MUWU bargaining team to speak and negotiate on their behalf, and Macalester has done the same. That representative process is both democratic and transparent.”
Though wider union membership initially joined the bargaining committee on Friday, Feb. 20 in the Harmon Room, where bargaining was scheduled to take place, Macalester and MUWU-UAW moved forward with a closed bargaining session, instructing other students to observe from outside the room.
“Ultimately, our mandate is to bargain the best contract we can for our members,” Xavier Honer ’28, a bargaining committee member, said. “That’s easier with members present, but if admin isn’t going to let that happen, then we as workers are just going to have to work around that.”
Wider union membership, asked to observe from outside the room though not allowed to be present in the Harmon Room, looked through its windows to demonstrate their continued support. About 10 student workers remained when the bargaining session ended, according to Honer.
During the bargaining session, Macalester proposed a clause that would prevent student workers from striking in any situation, including to protest a widespread contract violation or to show solidarity with other unions, according to Honer. The clause also holds that the college cannot prevent student workers from doing their jobs, a tactic known as a “lockout” that could be wielded against union efforts.
Almost all contracts between a union and an employer contain no lockout and no-strike clauses. However, the conditionality of no-strike clauses varies across contracts, with older estimates stating that less than half of contracts are “unconditional,” like the one Macalester is proposing, according to Bloomberg Law’s 1995 “Basic Patterns in Union Contracts” report.
“It reflects a mutual commitment by both parties to resolve disputes through the contract’s grievance and arbitration process rather than work stoppages,” Langer wrote. “This type of clause promotes stability, continuity of operations, and a predictable process for addressing disagreements during the term of the agreement.”
“MUWU-UAW will respond to Admin’s proposal at the bargaining table,” Honer wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly.
The college also maintained its position that off-campus and stipended student workers, including resident assistants (RAs) and Bonner scholars, should not be part of the bargaining unit.
Honer sees ties between this position and Macalester’s stance on open bargaining.
“They’re trying to exclude workers from the union,” he said. “They’re trying to divide us up. They’re trying to prevent us from being able to come into the room. For all the talk about inclusion that we hear, it’s disappointing.”
Macalester’s administration stated that its proposal reflects the student workers who were certified as college employees by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last spring. The certification does not include these workers in MUWU-UAW’s bargaining unit, and Macalester does not wish to expand this unit to include them, according to Langer. The bargaining unit’s exclusion of off-campus and stipend student workers reflects a Macalester proposal, as Langer wrote to The Mac Weekly last winter.
During Friday’s bargaining session, MUWU-UAW proposed that all student workers receive timely paid training, that students with work study be prioritized in hiring and that the college be forbidden from responding to union involvement with academic retaliation, among a slate of other proposals. The next bargaining session is scheduled for 2-5 p.m. in the Harmon Room on Friday, March 13.
*Maggie Costello is a Staff Writer for The Mac Weekly.
