Our Platform

the following platform was approved by k-swoc/ue membership vote on January 27, 2022.

Student workers, like all students and community members, were brought to this campus by Kenyon’s promise of receiving a high quality education and the future paths that education can unlock. Over the past year and a half, student workers have held dozens of workplace meetings and countless conversations with coworkers to envision a path forward for student labor at Kenyon. The many common issues identified in these conversations demonstrate that such concerns are not limited to a single workplace but rather are indicative of serious shortcomings within the current system of student employment as a whole. These issues combine to put the promise of Kenyon out of reach for most student workers—something that needs to change if Kenyon is going to live up to its highest ideals. 

We wanted to take this opportunity to share with the broader Kenyon community a summary of how Kenyon has fallen short when it comes to workplace issues and our proposals for making student work accessible for those who hold these jobs. To reform student work at Kenyon and strengthen our community, we call on the Administration to provide:

  1. Adequate compensation that reflects the contributions we make to the Kenyon community

  2. Paid leave so no student worker will have to choose between pay and their health

  3. Payment for all hours worked for all jobs on campus 

  4. Job Stability and Security

  5. Agency for workers over their workplace conditions

  6. A free and fair election without delay

Below is a more detailed explanation of these demands with supporting statements from K-SWOC members on how addressing these issues would change the lives of student workers.

The following outlines the broad platform for change that we believe most effectively speaks to what the members of the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee have been fighting for and continue to fight for. 

All of the following quotes are from Kenyon’s mission statement and other public statements made by the administration. 

1. Fair Compensation for all Student Workers: Kenyon claims that, “{w}e believe equitable access to opportunity is essential to fostering a community in which every person has a sense of full belonging and the tools to reach their full potential. (emphasis added).” Student workers, like all students, are drawn here by the promise of a Kenyon education and its ability to help us reach our full potential in life. But, because most student workers rely on our jobs to pay for the cost of accessing that education, we find that we cannot reach our "full potential" if we must scramble to find multiple jobs, taking valuable time away from our studies, instead of getting the most out of the Kenyon experience. The College’s current pay tiers for student work make this nearly impossible and add unnecessary stress to our lives. We believe that all student workers — in the Bookstore, Admissions, LBIS, MLL and Classics Departments, our residence halls, and more — do meaningful work by enriching the lives of students, faculty, and staff every day. We believe the Administration should fairly compensate student workers for their labor by increasing wages for all student workers to at least the current rate of Tier 3 ($11.94/hour) and increase wages beyond the current Tier 3 rate. Additionally, they should implement a deferred compensation program akin to severance pay to give student workers, especially those from low income and marginalized backgrounds, the tools we need to reach our full potential at Kenyon and beyond.

2. Paid Sick and Mental Health Leave for all Student Workers: Kenyon claims that “{w}e support a culture in which we contribute to the well-being of others while we also care for ourselves.” That statement directly contradicts the experiences of student workers when we get sick. When Kenyon student workers contract a non-COVID illness, experience a physical injury, grapple with challenges to their mental health, or have to leave suddenly for a family emergency, we are forced to choose between missing shifts and losing wages to take time to recover, or going to work and prolonging our recuperation. The administration trusts us to successfully perform the duties essential to supporting the needs of the entire campus community on a daily basis; it must also trust us to know when we are not able to effectively do so and provide us with the means to take time for our own health and well-being. We believe Kenyon should live up to its professed culture of mutual support by granting all student workers a system of paid time off for sick leave, bereavement leave, and mental health leave—benefits other College employees already have.

3. Payment for all Hours Worked: Kenyon proclaims that “{w}e treat one another with respect and kindness, speaking with sincerity and acting with integrity, for we recognize the fundamental dignity of all.” These values are rarely experienced by student workers. Many of us work hours close to or exceeding the number of hours we spend in our classes each week and far too many of them are unpaid. We believe it is unacceptable to expect student workers, who are already overworked and underpaid, to perform unpaid labor for the College—especially given the unprecedented prosperity the current Administration has helped to build. ​​This includes hours spent in staff meetings and discussions with management about our work, hours worked by unpaid interns, and unpaid training including classes that exist only to qualify for a position and can serve as a financial barrier to some students.

4. Job Stability and Security: The quote with which we started bears repeating: “We believe equitable access to opportunity is essential to fostering a community in which every person has a sense of full belonging and the tools to reach their full potential.” Student workers rely on the hours we get from one or multiple positions to reach our full potential as we complete our work study requirements and help cover the expenses of attending Kenyon. A lack of stable hours or uncertainty about maintaining a job from semester to semester can make it impossible to plan our futures, reach our potential, and ensure that our obligations are met. Semesterly hiring practices, such as those applied to MLL TAs, or situations like the administration refusing to rehire the Horn Sound Techs for over a year, have often led to qualified student workers losing hours and entire positions without warning. Student workers should know and have a say in the number of hours they work from week to week and from semester to semester.

5. Agency for workers over their workplace decisions: One of Kenyon’s stated goals is to ensure that “students are active in producing their own experience, rather than being primarily receivers or observers.” As student workers, we are intimately aware that this promise is not extended to our working conditions. Every time we notice the chronic understaffing, low wages, and constantly changing hiring requirements to which we are subjected, we are reminded of why we need a recognized union: to implement and retain control over the conditions of our work. When student workers are denied agency, the whole campus community suffers. Last year, the administration’s unilateral decision to remove CAs from apartments denied CAs access to large swaths of Kenyon housing, robbed all apartment residents of the support that CAs provide, and demonstrated how little input and influence student workers have over the jobs they do and the services they provide to the community. In the case of the Kenyon Farm, lack of agency in the workplace has inhibited the ability of Kenyon Farm associates to work efficiently and to consistently provide food and security for their animals, despite their status as the primary caretakers of all livestock on the Farm. In these cases, student workers are the most familiar with the specialized needs of our areas of work and would benefit from having avenues to speak for ourselves and our fellow workers.


6. A Free and Fair Election so all Student Workers can Have their Voice Heard: One of the foundational principles of Kenyon is that, as a community, “{w}e believe equitable access to opportunity is essential to fostering a community in which every person has a sense of full belonging…” Feeling like you belong means acting in ways that demonstrate that belonging, actions which must be built on a foundation of trust and security. When student workers are denied the right to vote on whether they wish to form a union through which they can represent their interests, we are told we are not full, equal members of the Kenyon community. We are, instead, treated as children incapable of employing the reasoning and critical thinking that is core to the promise of Kenyon. While the Administration reminds us that we are able, and strongly urged, to have our voices heard by voting in municipal, state, and national elections, we are denied that right when it comes to our workplaces. By calling for a free and fair election, we are trying to live up to Kenyon’s promise to always “confront enduring and emerging questions with honesty and imagination.” Only by building something new, a wall-to-wall union representing our own interests as student workers, can we create the conditions needed to have this dialogue with the Administration as equals and without fear of retaliation. 


These demands are neither an exhaustive list of issues that affect student workers nor a complete list of solutions to the issues that K-SWOC members have organized around since our campaign first began. They do, however, represent a foundation for a renewed dialogue about building a more inclusive, accessible, and effective system of student employment at Kenyon. Reforming student employment with student workers at the table as genuine equals with the administration may not guarantee the adoption of every change we listed here—but we will never move forward unless we are included. We ask the College administration to commit to beginning that dialogue with K-SWOC and to uphold Kenyon’s mission to engage “spirited, informed, and collaborative inquiry.” To that end, on December 9, a group of approximately 60 student workers representing multiple workplaces met with Vice President for Student Affairs Limas to deliver some of these demands; the full recording of this meeting can be found below. We thank Vice President Limas for his willingness to meet with student workers to discuss their concerns and we await the administration’s response on the next steps. 

Sincerely, 
The Members of the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K-SWOC/UE)

Link to full recording


In line with the motto of our national affiliate, the United Electrical, Radio, & Machine Workers of America,

the members run this union.

Here is how we work to best practice the principles of union democracy.

Financial Processes and Transparency

Financial transparency

A spreadsheet outlining purchases and donations over the past year can be found here. A more digestible version of this spreadsheet can be found here.

How we are funded

K-SWOC receives the vast majority of its funding from direct donations from the community made to the K-SWOC Venmo account. Some of these donations are in the form of K-SWOC t-shirt purchases or tickets for events such as our Alumni Zoom concert. We are deeply appreciative of the support the Kenyon community, in particular Kenyon alumni, and the broader labor community has shown over the past year and a half.

Additionally, K-SWOC receives monetary support from United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) in the form of salary payments for the three UE employees now contributing to our campaign. We are deeply appreciative of this support and the partnership we have with UE. This is a particularly humbling form of support because such funding comes from the dues money of  UE locals, including that of the members of the 26 skilled trades workers on Kenyon’s campus who make up UE local 712.

How spending is determined

This answer is two-pronged and depends on who is providing the funding, be it our national affiliate, the UE, or donations made directly to K-SWOC.

UE Support

Spending made by the UE on the behalf of K-SWOC keeps in mind both how to best support K-SWOC’s campaign and how to best serve the existing membership and locals, like the skilled trades workers on campus with the UE 712, who are funding such expenditures. K-SWOC plays an active role in helping to determine how such generous support can most effectively assist Kenyon student workers in fighting for workplace democracy. Ultimately decisions on funding are made by the membership of the UE through the annually elected General Executive Board members (including Bob Smith of 712) and the national officers who are elected every 2 years. The most prominent use of UE support has been the assigning of staffers to help support worker organizing on the ground. 

Donations

Purchases made on behalf of K-SWOC/UE over the amount of $25 using direct donations have been consistently subject to a vote of the membership, typically held through general meetings or open planning meetings. In an effort to improve transparency and accessibility this coming semester, we aim to use digital ballots sent using both our distribution list and our main organizing chat.

What spending is used for

In the past, spending has been used for the following:

  • Strikes - over 90% of spending has been to pay back lost wages to striking workers. Every striking worker receives Kenyon Tier III payment for all hours of lost wages while on strike.

  • Operational Costs - the remainder of spending is spent on supplies for KSWOC as a whole, such as postering supplies, website upkeep, and a Canva subscription, or for supporting shop organization, such as food purchases for shop meetings.

  • Salaries - There is currently one full-time employee and two part-time employees of UE who assist in our campaign. Their salaries are paid entirely by the UE and do not come out of donations made directly to K-SWOC. 

UE Salaries

All salaries for any employees of the UE are voted on by membership every two years, most recently at the Convention in September 2021 and locals voting in October and November. The next Convention will be in Pittsburgh in 2023.

Three UE employees currently work part or full time on supporting worker organizers and K-SWOC’s campaign for union recognition. 

The UE takes pride in the fact that the members that the union represents, in general, are paid higher than the union representatives and board members. The UE constitution mandates that no member of UE staff should be paid more than any rank and file worker. All of the national union’s salaries are subject to the vote of the membership and are freely available online. 

No money donated directly to K-SWOC is spent on the salaries of UE employees. They are paid directly by the UE to assist K-SWOC’s campaign.