For two and a half years, some staff members at Macalester have been organizing a union under the banner of the Macalester Advocacy Committee of Employees (MACE). As MACE’s unionization efforts progress, the organization has decided to make its work more public.
MACE’s bargaining unit would represent all Macalester staff members who are not already unionized, who do not hire or fire any non-student workers and who do not work in the Athletics department, which is classified as a separate community of interest. MACE’s bargaining unit would include both hourly and salaried workers, and would not include faculty members who do not also hold qualifying staff roles. The number of people in the bargaining unit would fluctuate as some people enter and leave jobs, but averages out at around 260 staff members.
In May 2024, MACE voted to affiliate with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), which is an independent state-level union that represents around 18,000 professionals, including other college and university employees.
Jake Nagasawa, a visiting assistant professor of American Studies, was one of MACE’s first organizers.
“We started meeting … to talk about some of the challenges that we faced working here,” Nagasawa said. “It just sort of snowballed into us eventually deciding that this was going to be a movement toward unionizing.”
Despite not currently being part of the planned bargaining unit, Nagasawa previously worked as the American Studies department coordinator and in the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship while obtaining his PhD.
“I have a personal interest in supporting the staff union because I was one — I had staff experience,” Nagasawa said. “So supporting staff and anything that improves their working conditions and gives them a seat at the table is important to me.”
Organizing efforts ramped up after President Donald J. Trump was reelected in November 2024.
“I think after the Trump election, it was like, if we’re going to do this, we have to do it now,” MACE organizing committee member Jeremy Meckler ’10 said. “So there’s always some sort of urgency in organizing work, I think, but it’s definitely an impetus to act before, you know, before any of the norms are eliminated.”
Alongside his primary role, Meckler is the media and cultural studies department coordinator, grant coordinator and editorial manager of Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange and the grant coordinator for CollectED, a project that aims to increase education around battery recycling at Macalester.
In December 2024, just a month after the presidential election, MACE expanded their organizing committee (OC), the group of people most involved in unionization efforts, to include more members, including art and art history department coordinator Gwen Comings.
Comings is in their fourth academic year of working as the art and art history department coordinator. Their role includes planning events, managing the budget and working to send students to conferences. It receives 80 percent of the hours of a full-time job, known as 0.8 full-time employment (FTE), plus 100 hours over the summer. The starting salary for department coordinators at Macalester, according to Comings’ 24-25 Total Compensation Statement, is $21.24 per hour.
“I, in my [opinion], am doing a middle-class job, but I don’t make a middle-class wage,” Comings said. “If you’re working a full time job, or even [a] 0.8 [FTE] job, you should be able to live on one job.”
Comings works two other jobs to support themself and their spouse. Even so, they find themself saving up to live over the summer, when they receive far fewer department coordinator hours. In addition, a large portion of their income goes to paying for premiums for Macalester’s health insurance and for the services that insurance does not cover. Comings wants a financial situation that easily allows them to maintain their department coordinator job.
“A lot of us on the [OC] haven’t had specific … issues with the college,” Comings said. “A lot of us really love our jobs and just want to be able to afford to stay here.”
In their role on the OC, Comings has talked to coworkers about signing union cards.
In these conversations about card-signing, themes have emerged in people’s reasoning for signing. For instance, Comings explained that many staff who signed cards want changes to their wages, more control over the conditions of employment and a stronger community of staff members across campus.
Matthew Sherman, associate registrar, works on promoting and advancing the effective use of technology between the Registrar’s office and Information Technology Services (ITS).
At the beginning of this semester, Sherman was approached and asked to join MACE.
“Within five minutes of conversation, I said yes,” Sherman said. “I had never been involved with a union before, or really had much experience whatsoever in unionizing, but it’s always been something that I think everyone should have, so it was pretty easy for me to walk down that road.”
Since the initial contact, Sherman has become more involved with the unionization efforts and is now a part of the organizing committee. As a part of the committee, Sherman tries to utilize their skill sets, which, in their words, tend to be in technology support and data work.
Sherman is hopeful for MACE’s future and believes in the larger goals of forming the union and eventually negotiating for a contract with Macalester. If this contract is successfully agreed upon, there are some things he would hope to see in writing.
“I would like our benefits to be written into a contract so that they can’t fully strip those away if there’s budgetary concerns,” Sherman said. “And I would like the lowest level of compensation to be pushed up more so that [workers with that wage] can have a livable wage and actually afford to work here for many years to come.”
“I love Macalester, so I would like to work here until I retire,” Sherman continued. “And I think I will be able to, but I want everyone who loves Macalester and wants to work here until they retire [to have] the option.”
Other recent additions to the organizing committee are Program Coordinator for the Office of Student Research and Creativity (OSRC) Liz Bolsoni and Associate Director of Career Advising Marcos Cruz.
“I am pro-union, regardless of who is in office,” Bolsoni said. “We can’t necessarily wait for somebody like Trump to be in office to take that issue seriously. And I don’t think that the people in the union necessarily did at all. I think it’s true that [the Presidential election] has mobilized a lot of people that maybe weren’t thinking about [unionization] before he was elected.”
“We are entering a very big period of uncertainty, with everything going on from an executive order standpoint, what’s going on federally,” Cruz added.
On Jan. 27, President Trump fired a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member for not “operating in a manner consistent with the objectives of [the] administration,” according to CBS News. Then, on March 27, President Trump signed an executive order “ending collective bargaining for wide swaths of federal employees,” according to NPR.
Every staff member is an at-will employee and can be fired at any time, according to Nagasawa and Meckler. By signing a union contract, MACE hopes to provide job security for staff members in these uncertain times.
“I think that’s a big driving concern for us,” Nagasawa said. “Sure, there are critiques and concerns [of Macalester], but really, overall, I think it’s a place that people really enjoy working at. I think people come to Macalester with a certain set of values that resonate with Macalester. … And so people want to have some job security in that place.”
While members of MACE’s organizing committee have specific objectives in mind for the union to accomplish, such as raising staff pay, securing retirement benefits and ensuring the continuation of the Dependent Tuition Assistance Program (DTAP), some also see MACE as an opportunity to benefit Macalester.
“I really think our goal is to help Macalester live up to its values,” Meckler said. “I think that is maybe most clearly represented by the fact that we have a bunch of alums who are on our organizing committee. I am a Macalester alum, and I feel like I’m organizing this union because of the values that I learned while I was a student at Macalester.”
Macalester’s mission statement emphasizes “service to society,” something Bolsoni believes is tied to a union.
“Our labor, our work, is in service of students and our community,” Bolsoni said. “The cool thing about the union is that regardless of what work we do, how we serve the community or our society, we can come together and have a unified voice and a seat at the table to ask for what we think is fair and right.”
Bolsoni also joined the MACE seeing a potential avenue toward political change. In July 2024, soon after MACE affiliated with MAPE, MAPE signed a resolution titled “Supporting a Ceasefire and Divestment in Israel-Palestine.”
“That’s the kind of unit I want to be a part of,” Bolsoni said. “What does our wage mean if it’s blood money? I don’t want to work for a higher wage just because of that. I want it to be a wage that is not supporting an apartheid system, a genocidal state.”
Bolsoni cited the Dunnes Stores strike in Ireland as an example of change unions can affect. In 1984, 11 workers went on strike, refusing to handle goods from apartheid South Africa. When Desmond Tutu visited the striking workers, there was a change in attitude. Bolsoni sees an inextricable link between the fight for civil rights and labor.
“The [American] working class is made up of a really diverse group of people,” Bolsoni said. “So there’s no way that we can separate workers rights and immigrant rights, there’s no way we can separate workers rights and queer rights. There’s really no way to do that, because working people are all of those things.”
While there is some fear that the college may retaliate against anyone supporting the union, there is hope that Macalester will recognize the union’s importance.
“There’s some important values that Mac upholds, and it doesn’t seem to be in line with what they believe to retaliate against us in any way,” Bolsoni said.
“I would think it’s not aligned with Macalester values to get rid of me for saying something [supporting the union],” Nagasawa said.
Still, for Nagasawa and Meckler, who both hold a position not protected by any potential agreement, there is some unease. Cruz’s job would be protected by the union, but he still acknowledges the anxiety around speaking up.
“Fear is a prereq[uisite] for courage,” Cruz said. “There’s always going to be a baseline of [fear]. And what’s being called for right now is courage in the face of some really challenging pieces.”
“I think there’s a lot of fear,” Nagasawa said. “Those of us who go into the academy as professors are always told, ‘Don’t speak up until you have tenure.’ … In the times that we live in, that’s not a way for me to live. I can’t live in fear.”
“Of course I’m scared of losing my job—I’d be stupid not to be scared,” Meckler wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “That said, I think the scariest thing right now is not the response we might get from the Macalester administration and board, but the broader attacks on higher education that we–students, staff, faculty, and administrators–are all facing together. …I think it’s scarier to imagine facing those very real external threats without a union.”
Not all staff members feel so strongly that a union will offer them protection. According to Comings, the staff members who have been more reluctant to sign cards have been wary of losing benefits through the bargaining process. Some employees are especially concerned about losing access to DTAP, a program that grants tuition benefits at participating Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities and Associated Colleges of the Midwest schools to the dependent children, spouses and domestic partners of Macalester staff and faculty. DTAP, however, is only accessible to staff and faculty who are not in a collective bargaining unit and who have a sufficient FTE.
Engineers, custodians and grounds and trades workers, are not eligible for DTAP. In an email to The Mac Weekly, Vice President of Administration and Finance Patricia Langer noted this difference, as well as a gap in the type of retirement benefits available to unionized staff.
“These will be important considerations for all staff who may be eligible to vote in an upcoming election,” Langer wrote.
“We don’t want to lose these generous benefits either,” a MACE FAQ document stated, referring to DTAP, retirement and other benefits. “For many Macalester employees, these benefits are the reason we’re still working here. And because we don’t want to lose them, we wouldn’t accept a contract that doesn’t maintain these long-standing programs. As at-will employees, we could currently lose any existing benefits program at any time at the discretion of management. By including these benefits in a negotiated union contract we can protect them.”
The Mac Weekly was unable to reach staff members who did not sign a union card for comment.
MACE hopes to file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board by the end of the academic year. For workers in the prospective bargaining unit, MACE will hold an open meeting in the Harmon Room in the DeWitt Wallace Library from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. on May 1.
