In fall 2024, Macalester College’s non-faculty staff received the news that Macalester’s health insurance premiums were increasing by up to 30 percent, a change that would hit many non-faculty staff hard.
For Gwen Comings, Macalester’s art and art history department coordinator, the increase was seriously damaging.
“That was like a huge gut punch,” Comings said. “Some positions at Macalester … can afford [that increase], but for the lowest-paid people on campus, it’s kind of untenable.”
Rising health care costs galvanized many of Macalester’s non-faculty staff to organize a union. At the end of the 2024- 2025 academic year, non-faculty staff unionized with the help of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), a regional union experienced in negotiating with higher education institutions.
Now, as a local chapter of MAPE, MAPE at Mac elected a team of five non-faculty staff as their bargaining committee to negotiate with Macalester’s administration for a first union contract. Bargaining began in late October, with the union and the administration meeting for negotiations on nine separate days. However, progress has been limited, according to Karl Snyder, senior advancement records specialist and member of MAPE’s bargaining committee.
“It’s been very slow. We’ve been disappointed with the degree to which the administration is engaging with our proposals,” Snyder said. “We would like it to go faster than they would like … but at this point it’s like [Macalester is] not really even responding with [their] own proposals.”
The pace of negotiations has been on par with what Vice President of Administration and Finance Patricia Langer said that she would expect for a first contract.
“Negotiating an initial agreement is inherently complex, and the issues being discussed carry significant long-term operational and financial implications for Macalester,” Langer wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “Both parties are working through these matters carefully, which is typical and necessary to reach a final agreement that is workable and sustainable.”
Adam van der Sluis ’11, Macalester’s senior gift officer and a member of MAPE at Mac’s bargaining committee, said he feels “agnostic” about the pace of negotiations.
Though van der Sluis said that “find[ing] a time where everybody can meet is hard,” he also said that “there’s urgency to get [the contract] done. And also, knowing that [Macalester] can’t make changes to anything related to [things like] compensation and benefits without approval of the union is a good piece of protection.”
Jake Mohan, Writing Center coordinator and co-chair of the Contract Action Team (CAT), which researches proposals and communicates to the rest of the unit, said staff members have been disappointed when they hear about the administration’s response to proposals. “They want to know what [MAPE] can do to change it.”
“I used to be one of those people [who didn’t make a living wage] many years ago, when I first started here, and I had to take second jobs,” Mohan continued. “Many of my colleagues do as well. And it shouldn’t be like that. People should be able to survive on the pay that they get from a world-class institution with Macalester’s reputation.”
According to Jeremy Meckler, department coordinator for media and cultural studies and co-chair of the Contract Action Team, department coordinators are especially impacted. Many are counted as part-time employees, even when their workload increases, such as when there are new faculty members or increased students in the department. They also have lower pay compared to other staff. Meckler describes department coordinators as being “at the bottom of the totem pole.” For his department coordinator position, Meckler is considered at 0.54 full-time equivalent. By also taking other jobs on campus, Meckler as well as some other department coordinators are able to work enough to qualify for full-time status.
The bargaining committee entered into negotiations with 50 proposals they thought were important to include in a contract. So far, Macalester and MAPE at Mac have tentatively agreed to seven of them. The CAT put together a website listing the proposals and counterproposals brought forth on each bargaining day, available online.
The proposals range from procedures for new employee orientation and severe weather closures, wage increases and health insurance. These economic proposals reflect some of the issues that union members find most important.
“Unsurprisingly, people are concerned about their pay,” Mohan said. “They’re concerned about benefits, like health care. Everyone agrees that our employees’ compensation is not keeping pace with inflation, and so we have received modest raises at the end of each fiscal year, but they are hardly sufficient to keep pace with inflation. Our health insurance premiums have skyrocketed, and I believe everyone is just generally very concerned about the outlook.”
During negotiations on Friday, March 6, Macalester’s bargaining team rejected the union’s wage proposal. MAPE at Mac had proposed that employees receive a six percent wage increase retroactive to Sept. 2025, and that the college establish a uniform $25.15 per hour or $50,677.25 annual minimum wage rate for all MAPE at Mac jobs. In its written rejection of the wage increase, the college cited the three percent wage increase that employees received in Sept. 2025, the unbudgeted nature of the union’s proposed six percent increase, and “wage growth well above market trends” that a six percent increase would cause. The college also explained that it maintains a wage structure that reflects differences in positions’ variety in duties and requirements, and that a single minimum wage would compress wages across campus.
The two parties have also had initial discussions around the Dependent Tuition Assistance Program (DTAP), which provides benefits towards tuition at Macalester and other regional participating schools to employees’ dependent children, spouses and domestic partners. In accordance with practices established before MAPE at Mac unionization, Macalester staff who have worked at the college for a set amount of time currently receive DTAP benefits. Unionized janitorial and grounds staff bargained away DTAP benefits in favor of funding other benefits in an early contract, and do not have DTAP benefits to this day.
“[Staff] is not going to accept a contract in which we lose DTAP,” Meckler said. “That was a key thing that everybody said when we were organizing in the first place, that it’s an important benefit for us.”
The union proposed that members receive DTAP benefits. Their proposal kept some eligibility requirements consistent with those in existence, and made some changes. For instance, according to the policies established before MAPE at Mac unionized, part-time employees who work 0.50–0.74 Full Time Employment (FTE) receive up to four semesters of DTAP benefits after working at Macalester for at least ten years. MAPE at Mac proposed that these part-time employees be eligible for “prorated benefits based on FTE after an equal prorated period of service.” For example, staff members with a 0.5 FTE would be eligible in two years for up to six semesters or nine trimesters of DTAP benefits.
The college did not accept the proposal, not wanting to commit to it before hearing all of the union’s proposals, according to van der Sluis. Macalester bargaining team members also referenced the employee handbook’s statement that unionized staff don’t qualify for DTAP. MAPE at Mac members argued that that provision applies to the specific situation of janitorial and grounds staff, and does not inherently apply to themselves. (END)- mac not interested acknowledging more to come
“DTAP represents a substantial investment by the College and is an important topic in negotiations and will continue to be discussed,” Langer wrote.
In its written responses to union proposals, Macalester’s bargaining team has often indicated that it is “not interested” or “not interested … at this time” in the union proposals — many of which reflect existing practices laid out in the employee handbook. The union has integrated existing practices into its proposals to codify them.
“It feels like it’s a little counterintuitive that a lot of the proposals to what’s currently already in practice and wouldn’t require a big change from the institution are the things that are not being agreed on,” Emi Menk, associate director of the Center for Student Leadership & Engagement and CAT member, said.
This is typical for a first contract, according to Mohan. “Essentially, [it would] just be taking the language from the employee handbook, putting those into articles to be in a contract that would then be enforceable by the contract. And in response to that, the employer has countered with proposals that are less generous than what we currently enjoy, and has attempted to retain the right to change the terms of our employment at their discretion, even within the context of a contract which is unacceptable.”
Several of MAPE at Mac’s written responses to employer proposals similarly state that the union is “not interested at this time” in those proposals.
Many of the counterproposals that Macalester’s bargaining team has offered say that the rules they lay out “may be amended from time to time at the sole discretion of the Employer.”
To Menk, this runs counter to “the whole point of the contract, [which] is to get stuff locked in. … One of the biggest things we wanted to do was take what’s there [in the handbook] and then get that codified.”
A few times, Macalester has told the union that it would bring a counterproposal to the next meeting, and then showed up without that counterproposal, according to Menk. Menk said she thinks these actions, especially when they regard policies already in existence in the handbook, contradict Macalester’s values.
In Menk’s view, the college claims to be “raising folks to lead ethically and respond to complex challenges … [but] this process is not in alignment with those [stated values].”
“It is difficult to provide responses from the management perspective, until we have received all of the union’s proposals,” Langer wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “Many proposals have financial implications and some would represent significant new costs, so it is important for Macalester to understand the collective financial impact of the union’s proposals before we can respond to individual proposals.”
The next bargaining day will take place on Thursday, April 16. There will be three other bargaining days before the end of May.
