Dear Hamilton Community,

As many of you may have heard, in late August a group of Admission Office tour guides and senior fellows backed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election to determine whether students working in the Admission Office should be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW-Labor One).

The College supports the rights of student workers to unionize if a majority so choose. However, as an educational institution that values critical thinking, the College also urges each student to study the matter carefully in order to make a well-informed and independent decision.

The College has provided our tour guides and senior fellows answers to Frequently Asked Questions (http://hamilton.edu/unionFAQ), and their supervisors, the dean of admission, and I have made ourselves available to meet with any students. There is a great deal of misinformation circulating regarding this important issue, so we urge interested parties to refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for clarification. In addition, I am happy to answer questions for anyone in our community.

There are many factors to consider, but I believe these three are particularly important:

• A unionized workplace is less personal and more bureaucratic and rules-driven. The flexibility the Admission Office is currently able to provide for student workers (based on their frequently changing schedules, workload, and individual needs) may not be possible under union rules that will apply to the entire group.
• There is no guarantee that a union will result in better pay, and any potential increase may not cover the required minimum monthly dues. Tour guides who give only one or two tours each week could see their paychecks reduced by nearly one-third. Those who work 5–10 hours each week may see a 6–12% reduction in their pay.
• Most importantly, I worry that a third-party union with no experience with higher education, much less the profession of college admissions, will diminish the ability of Admission staff members to teach, mentor, and communicate directly with students. I believe this has the potential to undermine a work environment that has been greatly valued by the majority of students and alumni who have worked with our team during my 18 years at Hamilton.

The past few semesters have been challenging for all of us across campus, particularly students. In the Admission Office, we found that the opportunities to get to know our student workers the way we can when we see them in person with regularity were limited because of COVID. As a result, we were not able to demonstrate the genuine care we have for our students as effectively as we have in the past.

This fall, we rolled out new initiatives, training opportunities, an increased academic year pay rate, and student worker agreements, all of which were in motion before the union petition. We plan to hire new tour guides (something we haven’t had a chance to do since spring of 2020) to join those who supported us through the past few semesters, and we’re very excited about this year’s exceptional senior fellows who just completed their intense fall training (and are already interviewing future Hamiltonians!). We are proud of them and want to make sure they and our community know just how committed we are to Hamilton’s tour guides and senior fellows.

Sincerely yours,

Monica Inzer, Vice President for Enrollment