On Sept. 23, Hamilton College’s student tour guides and senior admission fellows voted 25–20 in favor of unionizing. This vote formed the first-ever union representing college admissions office employees in the United States. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the union that students elected to join, announced the results of the vote on Tuesday, Oct. 12 after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) completed the count.

“I’m ecstatic and very happy,” said Eric Cortes-Kopp ’22, a senior admissions fellow and member of the UFCW organizing committee. “It’s been months of stress and worrying and at the end…we were still able to come out on top. It’s big.” In Mar. 2021, the NLRB repealed a Trump-era rule that prohibited undergraduate students from joining a union. This election is the first time that undergrads voted to unionize since this rule was repealed.

Monica Inzer, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Hamilton, responded to the outcome of the election, saying “I don’t think a union is the right thing for our students…I trusted [students] to use common sense, but I think the emotion of it got to them and this was an emotional vote…students will vote with emotion instead of rational thinking. I thought the students would be more rational and that more of them would not vote for the union”

Hamilton College released an

official statement

after the announcement of the election results. It reads: “The National Labor Relations Board has counted the ballots and a majority of those Admission student workers who voted selected union representation. Hamilton supports the right of workers to choose what they believe is best for them. We recognize that there were strong opinions on both sides of this issue, and we encourage everyone to work together as we move forward. As always, Hamilton greatly appreciates all of the hard work and dedication that our student employees bring to the jobs they perform while pursuing their academic careers.”

Inzer told

The Spectator

she was “surprised [the vote] was close” because she predicted that students would vote overwhelmingly against the union. But Inzer “can’t even be mad” because “in many ways, they’re victims of a union…The union kind of targeted our students and saw this as an ‘in’ on-campus and I feel bad for the students, even the ones who voted for it because I don’t think it’s in their best interest.”

The union election occurred in the first-floor conference room of the Sadove Student Center. 80% of Hamilton student admissions workers were present at the polls. The NLRB delayed ballot counting until this past Tuesday because two students who are currently on the D.C program voted by mail.

Samantha DeRiso, President of Central New York Labor Council, said she felt “super excited for the students that are making history.” DeRiso advised the admissions workers throughout the unionization process. She noted that from the beginning, “the students really knew what they wanted, and they were not afraid to say it.”

Max Steffey ’22, who started working as a tour guide in Spring 2019 and gave tours during Summer 2021, voted against the union. When Steffey initially heard that students were organizing, he was “proud of Hamilton students for demanding more of administration because I was generally aware that a lot of admissions workers had some problems with their treatment.” However, Steffey eventually voted against the union “because I thought that it seemed particularly performative and unnecessary.” Now that the union has been voted in, Steffey “remains indifferent to the passing of the union, as I’m sure that it won’t affect the way my job functions…like many other tour guides, I’m not working this job for any financial reasons… I’m also doubtful of how efficient this process will be, because I’m sure that negotiating terms is going to take a while.”

Izzy Rutkey ’22, a tour guide and member of the union’s organizing committee who voted for the union said she “was so happy to learn that the union vote passed and that the majority of student admissions workers voted to give more power to our voices within the admissions office.” Rutkey hopes that the union “will allow [workers] to create a working environment [that reflects] the admissions office’s assertion that tour guides and senior fellows are the most sought after and prestigious positions on campus.”

The unionization process began in earnest after Dean of Admissions Peaches Valdes rejected a request submitted by summer tour guides for an 83¢ pay raise in early July 2021. After this rejection, summer admissions workers connected with Cortes-Kopp who helped summer tour guides begin the process of joining the UFCW and connected students with DeRiso. One of the summer tour guides, Lóri Fejes ’22, was fired from his incoming position as a Senior Admissions Fellow less than a month after requesting the pay raise.

Discussions between admissions workers about unionizing began as early as Fall 2020 and continued into Spring 2021. However, it came to a climax in Summer 2021. What follows is a nine-month timeline that identifies the events leading up to the union vote and examines the concerns of students working in the admissions office through an unprecedented, pandemic-stricken 2020–2021 academic year, and a severely understaffed Summer. Before jumping into the timeline, below is a description of Hamilton’s student worker wage structure, and an explanation of how the wage structure in practice influenced the 83¢ pay raise request and subsequent unionization efforts.

Hamilton’s Student Worker Pay Scale

Hamilton’s

pay scale for student workers

operates in a three-tiered system. The first and lowest tier is for “positions that require individuals to be dependable and attentive…and positions that require some skill with training normally provided by the department and specific attention to detail.” “Positions that require the ability to clearly communicate specific academic or technical knowledge and understanding to others,” are situated within the intermediate bracket. The highest bracket is reserved for “positions that require advanced academic or technical knowledge and understanding of processes to the extent needed to assess and critically evaluate others’ work and/or the supervision and training of others.”

Director of Human Resources Stephen Stemkoski said that it has “been our approach to use minimum wage to set the minimum threshold,” for Hamilton’s wage scale. The current minimum wage in New York State (outside of New York City, Long Island and Westchester County) is $12.50. The minimum wage has been increasing every year since 2016. At Hamilton College, an institution with an endowment of over one billion dollars, students working in Fall 2021 can be paid at most $13.75 per hour, which is $1.25 more than minimum wage.

Inzer said “we try to keep,” tour guides in the intermediate tier and Senior Admission Fellows in the top tier. However, in Fall 2021, tour guides are being paid $12.75, which falls within the lowest pay range of $12.50 to $12.91. Senior Admission Fellows are being paid $13.00, which falls within the intermediate range of $12.92 to $13.33. The top pay range in Fall 2021 is $13.34 to $13.75.

Summer pay ranges are always wider and higher-paying than the academic year’s pay range. During the summer, the pay range increases to $2.75, meaning that the ceiling for a Hamilton student working an on-campus job during Summer 2021 was $15.25. The three pay ranges in Summer 2021 were $12.50 to $13.41, $13.42 to $14.33 and $14.34 to $15.25. During Summer 2021, Hamilton’s admissions office paid tour guides $13.50 an hour, placing them near the middle of the Hamilton pay scale.

According to Stemkoski, student workers are spread evenly throughout the three payment tiers. Stemkoski said he was not sure how unionization of admissions workers would affect how Hamilton implements its pay scale, though he said he hopes to keep “things equitable for hourly-paid staff between those unionized and not.”

Through the union, admissions workers can now petition for a pay raise, as well as other concessions, as part of their union’s first contract negotiations that are set to occur over the course of the next several months.

Signs of Discontent

In Fall 2021, the admissions office offered solely virtual events, including Continental Chats and Major Meetups. According to Cortes-Kopp, since there were no tours, tour guides were either not working or worked “one hour, one admissions event per month.” At the time, Cortes-Kopp served as one of two Tour Guide Coordinators. Tour guides also attended virtual one-hour meetings once a month, which were paid.

At the beginning of Nov. 2020, the admissions office introduced “Tours from Your Sofa.” Student tour guides walked around the College with a selfie stick attached to an iPhone that was connected to Zoom. The objective of “Tours from Your Sofa” was to provide a virtual tour of campus to prospective students, as the College’s COVID-19 regulations during the Fall 2020 semester prohibited visitors to Hamilton. According to Inzer and Cortes-Kopp, this program ran from Nov. 2 to 20 as a “trial run” that was reserved for 5 veteran tour guides.

As one of two students in charge of scheduling “Tours from Your Sofa,” Cortes-Kopp felt that “there was a lot of frustration with trying to schedule [tour guides],” because only a few tour guides — including Kopp — could participate in virtual tours. This small group of guides gave six to seven tours a week, while tour guides outside of the veteran group led none. This contrasts with semesters before the COVID-19 pandemic, during which tour guides usually gave around three to four tours a week. Inzer said that “some students didn’t get as many hours as they would in ‘normal’ times, but others might have gotten more hours than typical.”

According to Cortes-Kopp, it was at this time when workers began “whispering” about needing a union in an “unofficial matter.” These whispers focused on the disparity in hours and seeming lack of control that tour guides had over who would give what tours.

The full rollout of “Tours from Your Sofa” occurred at the beginning of the Spring 2021 semester. This rollout included equitable participation from all campus tour guides. “The balance was better because we were scheduling it for everyone,” said Cortes-Kopp, who still served as a Tour Guide Coordinator during Spring 2020.

The Return to In-Person Tours

By Feb. 10, Hamilton College moved into the Blue operating status after several weeks of low case numbers. This change meant that students could now visit each other’s residence halls. Inzer said that the admissions office desperately wanted to offer in-person tours to the accepted students of the Class of 2025 because a vast majority of these students had never set foot on Hamilton’s campus. In early Feb., the admissions office submitted a plan to the COVID-19 Task Force for in-person tours.

Simultaneously, the office reached out to student tour guides about in-person tours. On Feb. 22, Alexa Ray, an Assistant Dean of Admissions at the time, sent an email to Hamilton’s student tour guides notifying them that during the week of Mar. 22, the admissions office was planning to “safely resume in-person tours in a modified, appropriately spaced and selective format.” The email asked guides to fill out a form if they wanted to lead in-person tours. It also requested that those who did not wish to participate should notify the admissions office.

Ray’s email received such a harsh and immediate response from tour guides that only two hours later, she sent out a follow-up apology email to the tour guides. In this email, she clarified that in-person tours would not be returning for another month, and only if the College moved into Green operating status. Ray noted in the email that Colgate was currently offering in-person tours, and that prospective students and their parents were already coming to Hamilton’s campus and taking self-guided tours since “there is nothing that stops them from arriving on campus and walking around.” Ray also clarified in this email that those who did not want to give in-person tours could elect to solely lead “Tours from Your Sofa”.

On Mar. 1, Student Assembly wrote to the COVID-19 Task Force protesting the proposed return of in-person tours. They stated in their email that “we have seen a massive outpouring of frustration, anger, and fear on this issue from the student body both on social media and to us as student government representatives…our primary concern stems from the imminent threat posed by resuming in-person tours, and the threat that this will cause to student employees in Admissions, in particular low-income students of color.”

Despite the backlash from the initial email, Inzer noted that “almost everybody said they were comfortable giving in-person tours.” According to Inzer, “nobody complained at the time” within the admissions office.

Hamilton moved to Green operating status on Mar. 8, 2021, and for the first time since Mar. 2020, Hamilton allowed students to leave campus to travel to Clinton and New Hartford on a limited basis. The College also allowed students’ parents to visit campus as long as they remained outside the whole time.

On Mar. 22, 2021, in-person tours returned to Hamilton’s campus for the first time since Aug. 2020. At first, tours were self-guided, but within a week, student tour guides returned to their backwards-walking ways, sauntering around campus with accepted students and their families.

Irene Park ’23 started as a tour guide in Jan. 2021 by leading “Tours from Your Sofa.” However, she began to give in-person tours in late March 2021. Park said in-person tours made her nervous because “you never know where these students are coming from.” She had “experiences where families wouldn’t keep their mask on, or it would come down or they would come too close.” Park felt that “if we’re having COVID-19 cases on campus I don’t think it’s a good idea to have more people on campus right now.” Regardless, she continued leading tours because she knew how important tours were to a prospective student’s decision, as Park herself “came to Hamilton because my tour was really nice.”

Cortes-Kopp’s view was that “we’re putting ourselves at risk to make Hamilton look good,” by giving in-person tours. He was offended that “the school offered no hazard pay to do these tours,” which he felt tour guides deserved due to the ongoing pandemic.

Cortes-Kopp said that both the disparity in hours in Fall 2020 and concerns about returning to in-person tours in Spring 2021 “added to the fire” of unionization. This fire grew biggest over the summer when tour guides worked full time for an admissions office that was understaffed.

Summer “Volunteers” and Gift Cards:

Each summer, Hamilton’s admissions office hires six to eight full-time tour guides. For the entire summer, each student works between 30 and 35 hours a week giving tours to prospective students. In Summer 2021, there was only one full-time tour guide who worked the entire summer. Two other students worked full-time for about two-thirds of the summer. The rest of the tours were covered by a rotating cast of students who lived on campus for a few weeks at a time and periodically covered shifts in the admissions office. The admissions office also employed, at different times, three students who were living on campus and working full-time as research assistants for professors.

Two of these students, Cherry Zhang ’22 and Yassine Dhouib ’24, gave tours on a volunteer basis for no pay. After their tours, these students received gift cards to Hannaford or other retailers, along with a thank you note from someone in the admissions office as a “thank you for volunteering their time,” according to Dean Valdes. Inzer said that “It was never a deal made in advance…they were never told ‘you’re going to get a gift card’…it was a strict policy of [students] volunteering and then later getting gift cards as a thank you.”

Dhouib said he feels “no ill-will towards the admissions office.” After initially leading some Saturday summer tours on a volunteer basis Dhouib worked as a full-time tour guide and received full compensation during the second half of the summer. Dhouib said that he was touched when management checked in with him when he was sick over the summer and he enjoyed the excursions they went on as a team.

Zhang works as a tour guide and an assistant for Associate Dean of Admission/Director of International Recruitment Anna Wise. Dean Valdes told

The Spectator

that Zhang received gift cards after volunteering to do tours while working as a research assistant over the summer. Zhang declined to comment for this article.

A third student, Sami Brown ’22, volunteered to give two tours during the summer outside of the time she was doing her biology research. Brown said that her supervisors never told her before giving her tour “if I would be paid or not paid. They just said, ‘can you come to help out with a tour at this time?’”

After her first tour on July 15, Brown got an email from Cam Segal, an Assistant Dean of Admissions, saying that she could pick up a $10 Utica Coffee gift card at the desk in the admissions office. Brown understood this to be her payment for the hour-long tour she gave, which was below the $13.50/hour rate that full-time tour guides made in Summer 2021. Dean Valdes responded over email “I would assume that she submitted hours to get paid. Over the years, our office has given coffee cards to people who have gone above and beyond as a thank you.”

After her second and last tour on July 24, Brown was able to log her hours normally and get paid on the tour guide payroll. This was after Segal gave Brown the option of again receiving a gift card, according to Brown.

Segal told

The Spectator

via email that he was not comfortable discussing “specifics regarding individual and personnel matters.’’ He continued in the email that “however, I can tell you this, I love my job. I love Hamilton and I care a tremendous amount about supporting our tour guides (including the 30 new ones we just hired). My goal (and that of my co-lead and colleagues) always has been and always will be to continue to make this program a positive, educational and rewarding experience for them and for us.”

Wriley Nelson ’22 also gave tours during Summer 2021 while living for the whole summer at home in Cooperstown, New York, which is an hour away from the College. Like Dhouib, Brown and Zhang, Nelson answered the admissions office’s call for workers and drove to school three different times to give tours to prospective students. Nelson received payment for these tours, but decided to stop doing them after his request to be reimbursed for travel costs was denied by Dean of Admissions Peaches Valdes. According to Inzer, Valdes and Director of Human Resources Steve Stemkoski, it is against school policy to reimburse student workers for travel costs. Nelson did not know this policy when he was driving from home to give tours over the summer.

Valdes said she initially did not know that Nelson was commuting to give tours. However, once she learned of this information and that Nelson ceased giving tours, she mailed him a $25 Visa gift card with a thank you note. “It was a thank you for volunteering,” said Dean Valdes before Inzer reaffirmed that admissions “never want to short students…we want to pay students the most competitive wages we can.” Nelson still has not used this gift card.

The Request for a Raise

Fejes, Nicholas Kern ’24 and a third student (who wishes to remain anonymous) were the three tour guides who worked full time in the admissions office for the majority of Summer 2021. For Kern, his position over Summer 2021 marked his first time working for the admissions office. The other two students both started working for the admissions office in 2019.

Going into the summer, Fejes was concerned that “there was no system in place to check who was vaccinated and who wasn’t,” for the visiting families, and that “it was just based on the honor system.” Like current students, prospective students and their families were no longer required to wear masks outside if they were vaccinated starting Summer 2021. However, families were not required to show COVID-19 vaccination cards, while Hamilton students were required to be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination in order to return to campus in Fall 2021 (unless they submitted a petition that was approved by the College). Like Cortes-Kopp, Fejes felt that students should be receiving hazard pay or wage increases as a result of giving in-person tours during the pandemic.

Early on in the summer, Fejes began to have conversations with other summer tour guides about their wages and contract with the school, hoping to learn more about why their pay was $13.50 an hour.

Some summer tour guides felt that it was unfair that they were only in the second bracket. “There’s a whole advanced knowledge bracket that we felt we should be a part of,” said Kern. “I thought it was strange that I could go down the Hill and work at McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts and make more than I would as a tour guide,” said Fejes.

Park, who gave tours during Summer 2021, said admissions workers deserved to be in the highest bracket because they “have to memorize any possible question that any prospective student could have.” She also thought that admission workers deserve higher wages because “you’re bringing these families around the school…you have to be able to handle situations with certain individuals who can be difficult…you have to pass a certification test to even begin giving tours.”

The Tour Guide Handbook is 31 pages long with instructions about what guides should talk about, facts about every area of study and details about how students should dress and present themselves. Every tour guide has to sign a confidentiality agreement because they often handle sensitive admissions data, as well as a service excellence pledge that further details how to interact with visitors.

Park worked as an archivist in the library for most of the day over the summer and agreed to start doing tours each day starting in late June because the office was understaffed. Park specifically avoided working full time in the admissions office in Summer 2021 because she knew that “doing three tours a day is really draining…you’re stuck in the admissions office and it gets very repetitive and mentally tiring all the time”

Park said she had friends in other jobs on campus for the same hours “who were making a lot more money than we were, [and they were just] sitting at a desk looking at their phones.”

These concerns pushed Fejes, Kern and the third anonymous student to ask their supervisors for a raise during their weekly tour guide meeting on Thursday, July 8. Fejes said that student workers wanted to be moved to the highest bracket, or, if that was denied, to have their wages raised to $14.33, which would be the very top of the intermediate payment tier. Dean Valdes did not usually attend these meetings, but when Fejes informed her before the meeting via email that the student workers would be asking for an 83¢ raise, she informed Fejes that she would be in attendance.

The student workers also decided before the meeting that if their request for a raise was denied, they would strike the coming Saturday, July 10. This date marked the first Saturday of Summer 2021 that the admissions office was open. Fejes said he realized that “we were, at that point in the summer, carrying the operation, we were giving tours and we were doing office duties when we weren’t giving tours.” He and the other tour guides felt that “we could sort of upset that environment or change that environment if we walk in one day and say we’re not going to give tours.” Fejes explained that the strike “was a conditional idea.” “If we get the pay raise, we don’t go on strike, if we don’t get the pay raise, we go on strike.”

Kern described the July 8 meeting with himself, Fejes, the anonymous third worker, Dean Valdes and two Assistant Deans as “a one-sided conversation…where we were telling all these grievances and they weren’t giving any leeway.”

The tour guides alleged that when the students asked why tour guides only qualified for the intermediate payment tier, Dean Valdes told them that the only jobs that made it into the top tier over the summer were research jobs with professors, and that tour guides would not be moving into that tier. Fejes then asked about the 83¢ raise, from $13.50 to $14.33 which Dean Valdes also denied. Dean Valdes said that she told the students “the wages are set prior to the summer, so we are not going to be raising wages at this time.” Dean Valdes said further that she assumed only Fejes was asking for a pay raise because “the other individuals in the room didn’t look at me,” and because Fejes did a vast majority of the talking. Inzer told

The Spectator

, “we thought we were paying competitively…we pay well above minimum wage and you had one individual who asked for a raise.” She continued, saying “that would be disruptive around campus…there would be disruption if everyone was giving raises on the fly all the time.”

Stemkoski told

The Spectator

that individual departments, like the admissions office, are allowed to set their wages however they like, as long as wages remain within the pay scale guidelines. Managers can have open discussions with their workers about what they would like their wages to be and change those wages without getting approval from Human Resources.

Kern and the third anonymous worker are adamant that Fejes’s request for a raise was their request as well. Additionally, the three students spoke to other tour guides before the meeting, and both Nelson and Park told

The Spectator

that they told the three students that they too wanted a raise.

The students left the meeting disappointed and were prepared to strike two days later on Saturday, July 10. However, admissions workers cancelled the strike after Fejes reached out to Eric Santamauro-Stenzel ’24, who was the incoming Vice President of Student Assembly at the time, and told him the outcome of the meeting and that they were planning a strike. Santomauro-Stenzel advised Fejes to call off the strike because “strikes are incredibly dangerous to do without a union protecting you.” Santomauro-Stenzel told Fejes that “if the tour guides went on strike, the College would basically fire you at will.”

Instead, Santomauro-Stenzel connected Fejes with Cortes-Kopp, who was doing on-campus research at the time and was set to become a senior admissions fellow in Fall 2021. Santomauro-Stenzel understood that Cortes-Kopp knew a lot about labor organizing because Cortes-Kopp had been interning at the Central New York Labor Council under DeRiso since Feb. 2020.

Fejes and the other summer tour guides listened to Santamauro-Stenzel and called off the strike with promises to begin the unionization process with Cortes-Kopp’s help. The week after the July 8 meeting, Cortes-Kopp hosted the first of what would become weekly organizing meetings for the union at Babbitt Pavilion. Kern, Fejes, the anonymous guide and several other tour guides attended this first meeting. Several signed union authorization cards, which is the first official step for creating a union.

Firing A “Disgruntled Employee”

A few weeks after the July 8 meeting, Fejes resigned from his position as a summer tour guide. However, Fejes still expected to work as a senior fellow in the admissions office in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022, a position he had applied for and been accepted to in Spring 2021. On Aug. 5, however, Dean Valdes called Fejes into a meeting at the admissions office.

In this meeting, Dean Valdes told Fejes that he would no longer be needed as a senior admissions fellow for the upcoming year. In response to questions about Fejes’ firing Monica Inzer told

The Spectator

“we’re not gonna talk about personnel issues, performance issues, disciplinary issues. It’s just not appropriate.” Inzer felt that “If there’s a disgruntled employee who doesn’t wanna work here they can quit… it’s a surprise to us if other students felt that way because we didn’t hear that.”

Fejes said that in the meeting, Dean Valdes told him he was being fired because, among other reasons, Fejes had been dissatisfied with how the admissions office was run, and that there had been times where Fejes questioned the decisions of this office. Both Kern and Fejes think that Fejes was fired because he led the July 8 request for a raise and because of his subsequent involvement with the unionization campaign. However, at the time that Fejes was fired, Dean Valdes and Inzer were completely unaware of the unionization talks that had been happening for three weeks.

Park was concerned and surprised when she heard that Fejes was fired. She said, “it sucks that when students try and voice their opinion, that a lot of the administration’s go-to strategy is to shut them down…because we have more workers, we’re gonna fire you and go find someone else.”

The Aftermath

Dean Valdes was first alerted to the existence of a unionization campaign on Aug. 23 when she received an email from the NLRB that alerted her to the petition that the admissions workers had filed with the NLRB via the UFCW. The student workers filed this petition after more than 30% of workers in the admissions office signed virtual authorization cards throughout July and Aug. 2021.

Dean Valdes said she thought the email containing the petition “was spam at first.” Inzer said that her initial reaction after seeing the email was that she had “never seen anything like this.” Inzer said that “No one had told us anything about a union,” prior to receiving the email.

Soon after receiving the petition, the College hired Raymond J. Pascucci from the law firm Bond, Schoeneck and King (BSK) to represent the school. Stemkoski told

The Spectator

that BSK is Hamilton’s “go-to” law firm for litigation of labor issues as well as other legal issues. Pascucci has litigated contracts in the past between Hamilton College and the Service Employees International Union, which represents Hamilton’s custodians, groundskeepers and other essential workers.

DeRiso said that BSK is “the number one firm [Central New York unions] go against” and that Pascucci himself is “very anti-union…he himself has gone up against UFCW many times.”

After hearing that the College had hired BSK, members of the organizing committee put up signs around campus that read, “If our union isn’t going to result in higher pay and better working conditions, then why is the school trying so hard to fight it?” and “Why is Hamilton willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to union-busting lawyers instead of giving its student workers a raise?” The organizing committee is made up of four seniors Nelson, Rutkey, Cortes-Kopp and Eva Nolan ’23, who each work in the admissions office and have been leading the organizing effort on behalf of the students.

In the weeks leading up to the Sept. 23 election, Hamilton released

21 Frequently Asked Questions

about unions on its website and advertised the article to student admissions workers. These questions, as well as two Letters to the Editor in

The Spectator

by

Inzer

and

Stemkoski

, drew heavily from an eleven-slide PowerPoint presentation created by Stemkoski that outlined Hamilton’s official positions on the union.

Stemkoski told

The Spectator

in an email that he provided the presentation to the fifty-three admissions workers who were eligible to vote in the election. This presentation lists bullet points which, among others, said that “Hamilton College is not ‘anti-union,’” that “union membership peaked many years ago in the 1950s and has been declining ever since” and that “bargaining involves tradeoffs and there are no guarantees.”

Cortes-Kopp said that these documents are examples of the College “having the classic ‘we’re not anti-union but we are anti-union’ rhetoric.” Cortes-Kopp also said that the result of the election was so close because “the school’s union-busting rhetoric worked.”

According to the Hamilton College website, the College published and distributed the FAQ’s, the PowerPoint and the letters in

The Spectator

because the College wanted “these student workers to have all the facts, to think through the issues carefully, and to make a well-informed individual choice,”

Additionally, days before the election, over 40 members of faculty signed a letter in support of pro-union student admissions workers. The letter said that “a union is a powerful way of ensuring that workers are able to individually and collectively participate in shaping their work environment.”

In the end, the majority of Hamilton’s admissions workers voted to join UFCW.

What Comes Next?

According to Cortes-Kopp, admissions workers will now receive anonymous surveys that workers will fill out in order to detail what concessions they hope to win in negotiations with their employer. Admissions workers will also choose among themselves via secret ballot who among them will speak for the workers at the negotiating table.

Inzer told

The Spectator

that despite the outcome of the vote, she does not “see the need for [the admissions workers’ union]…Unions used to be huge in this country, but not so much anymore because there are labor laws to protect people… and management practices have gotten better.” Inzer continued saying “in the end, I hoped the vote would go differently and it didn’t but there’s still two sides…we’re not anti-union, we’re pro-students.” Inzer told

The Spectator

that one student has already resigned since the vote because they didn’t want to be part of the union.

Dean Valdes said that “no matter how students voted, will we continue to support them,” and that she does not want her relationship to change with student workers in the admissions office. Further, Valdes argued that the unionization happened, in part, because “we’ve hired these students who have lost a year with us,” because most of their jobs were virtual. “It’s hard to create these relationships [over Zoom],” said Valdes.

Connor McManus ’23, who voted against the union, said “the biggest thing moving forward will be electing the correct representatives to do what is best for the group. I think it is evident that the majority of student workers agree changes need to be made in the admissions work environment. Now, our focus should shift towards resolving those issues.”

Kern told

The Spectator

that it will be “interesting to see how our students and faculty at admissions change and grow,” over the course of contract negotiations. Negotiating the admission workers’ first contract will likely take several months.

Rutkey said she hopes that “this is just the beginning for student workers at Hamilton coming together to say that they deserve to have their voices heard and respected and to be treated fairly in the workplace. Our union made history.” As a result, Rutkey is “looking forward to seeing a fundamental shift in how Hamilton values and treats its student workers.”