On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the Macalester Undergraduate Workers’ Union (MUWU) made history. With a vote of 406 to 61, plus 26 challenged ballots, Macalester student workers unionized, officially certifying MUWU to represent them for purposes of collective bargaining. This vote follows over two years of Macalester student workers’ organizing and comes amid a wave of student unionization around the country. It makes MUWU the first undergraduate workers’ union in Minnesota and the largest private sector undergraduate union in the U.S.
“I’m proud of the numbers, obviously,” Eliot Berk ’26, who has been a MUWU organizer since the beginning of the unionizing effort, said after the vote was called on Wednesday night. “At this point, I am most proud of the work that individual people put in and the growth that I’ve seen in myself and in so many other people in our organizing and our relationships through the past few years. … We all put our heart and soul into this, and you can feel it in the room right now.”
The election took place on Tuesday, Feb. 25 and Wednesday, Feb. 26 in the DeWitt Wallace Library’s Harmon Room. Of 1098 eligible voters, 493 participated in the election. The election was conducted with secret ballots, and voters answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to one question: “Do you wish to be represented for purposes of collective bargaining by Macalester Undergraduate Workers’ Union (MUWU)?”
87 percent of voters whose ballots were not challenged voted ‘yes.’
The newly-created bargaining unit includes all student workers — except those who receive a stipend, such as RAs, or work off campus, such as Bonner scholars. In Dec. 2024, in order to form a stipulated agreement with Macalester to authorize the election, MUWU agreed to exclude off-campus workers from the bargaining unit and leave stipended workers’ eligibility challenged. As per the stipulated agreement, stipended workers were among the 26 challenged votes.
Going forward, MUWU plans to work to include stipended and off-campus workers, whether that means negotiating their involvement in MUWU or supporting them in forming a union of their own.
“This is incredibly close to our dreams,” Henna Schecter ’26, who has been involved with organizing MUWU since it began, said. “The big disappointment is that [MUWU] doesn’t represent all workers. And I think that … we need to keep remembering [that representing all workers] is the goal and is what we are going to end with. We are not letting it stand as it is, but this is definitely closer to that dream than we have been before.”
MUWU began, in its original form, in January 2023. A group of Cafe Mac workers, in an effort to improve working conditions, decided to unionize their workplace. The group soon broadened its efforts, aiming for a wall-to-wall union that would represent all student workers.
Since going public with their unionization efforts on Feb. 7, 2024, MUWU members have been organizing for this election. They spent much of the spring and fall 2024 semesters getting union cards signed, eventually bringing 649 cards to the Minneapolis National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office on Nov. 25, 2024 to file for an election. Afterwards, on Dec. 6, 2024, MUWU and Macalester reached a stipulated agreement, authorizing the election. This semester, MUWU organizers have been conducting get-out-the-vote efforts, such as phone banking and worksite visits, in the lead-up to the election.
Reflecting MUWU’s origins, students from a variety of workplaces identified better conditions at Cafe Mac as a driving factor behind their vote.
“Last year, I work[ed] at Cafe Mac, and I think that enough is a reason why I’m voting yes,” Rachel Xu ’27 said.
Xu hopes that the union will improve conditions for Cafe Mac workers, including more time for breaks, more robust training and higher wages. She believes that students who work more strenuous jobs should receive more pay — especially Cafe Mac workers, who earn lower wages than their unionized Bon Appetit coworkers.
Atticus Khin ’26 echoed Xu’s concerns, noting that Cafe Mac workers and other students in relatively difficult jobs work many hours and have shifts on the weekends. He feels lucky to work what he considers a relatively easy job, and voted because he thinks all student workers should be treated equally. He also wants student workers to receive more sick time and time off, to not do work beyond what their title implies and to be sure that their wages will rise with inflation.
Some students voted with an eye not towards specific demands, but towards the trends and hierarchies that unionization aims to change.
Wren Kuratana ’27, having witnessed poor labor laws in their home state of North Carolina, voted to increase student workers’ sense of stability.
“I see what poor workers’ rights does to job insecurity,” Kuratana said. “And as a lot of funding gets pulled from higher education in the coming years … I would feel a lot more secure if I knew there was some larger bargaining body to secure rights for workers on campus. … Having a union, I think, would go a long way to making that feel a little bit less tumultuous.”
Ava Ortiz ’27, art and communications lead for MUWU, believes that unionization will increase student power. They have been conveying this idea in messaging about the union in the lead-up to the election.
“I’ve come across a lot of people not really having the mentality that we can change things; we don’t have to just sit down and accept issues or things that we’re given,” Ortiz said. “[Unionization is] giving us collectively the power of having legal grounds to be able to communicate with the school and get what we need.”
Although MUWU organizers do not plan to start collective bargaining until next school year, other work will keep them busy until then. Organizers are taking initial steps, such as circulating a petition, to include the workers currently excluded from the bargaining unit. They plan to organize around Cafe Mac workers’ demands and to extend their outreach throughout campus, garnering broad student input on workplace conditions as they move into the process of bargaining for a contract.
For now, MUWU organizers are anticipating the changes that unionization aims to provide.
“I’m excited that people will have a means to bring up shitty things that have been happening in their workplaces,” Berk said. “I’m excited for so many things: for dining hall workers and SMAs [Sports Medicine Assistants] and RAs [Resident Assistants] and grounds workers and all of these workers that are doing a lot of extra work. I’m also really excited for office workers like myself to hopefully continue to realize, ‘Even though my job is an easier job, I still deserve this. I do deserve this, and I deserve better. And I can bargain with a union like this and get used to that.’ Everyone can take that with them for the rest of their lives.”
In addition to improving workplace conditions for student workers, MUWU organizers hope the union will make life better for the whole campus community.
“I want us all to see this as an opportunity, not just to make changes in our workplace, but to make changes at Macalester in general,” Gabe, a MUWU organizer who requested to be identified only by their first name, said. “We are student workers: students and workers. We have the opportunity now, with this power that we are building, not just to earn higher wages, not just to improve our working conditions, not just to guarantee that every student worker has the opportunity to earn their work study award, but to change all of the things that we want to see different about Macalester, whether they’re in our workplaces or not.
“With the way that that a union benefits the whole community, we know that this union is not just for student workers, but for all students, for our staff here at Macalester, who are woefully underpaid, for our contingent faculty who are exploited to give us the education that we are paying so much money for,” Gabe continued. “This union is an opportunity to improve the lives of all of those people, to transform this place into what we know it can be.”
MUWU organizers’ vision of a changemaking contract and a union by and for all of Macalester will require wide input and participation.
“Whether or not we win the contract that we deserve, and whether or not we transform this place into the school that we deserve depends on what all of us here do in the next day, in the next week, in the next month and in the next year,” Gabe said. “To talk to our coworkers, our friends, our professors, our staff members, our alumni friends, our parents, and make sure that this entire campus community gets mobilized around the fight that we are gearing up for now: to win a contract and to change Macalester and to make this a truly great place, which I know that we can.”
