Student Unions and the Stalling Labor Movement: On St. John’s College students’ attempts at Unionization

Levan Hall at St. John's College - John Valat De Cordova for The Radical Times

On one of my first days on campus- even before my first Seminar on the Iliad- I heard from student-workers at St. John’s College (Santa Fe) (S.J.C.) about their struggles to unionize. So, from the perspective of a newly situated Freshman at the College already arguing with my classmates about the validity of the aforementioned Union; I want to try to answer the questions, What’s Happened, and Who are we as a College after these efforts?

To start, let’s look at the tantalizingly simple question- What’s Happened?

Now, you would think this is a fairly straightforward question, one that would have a clear and simple answer. But alas, this campus-wide game of telephone by upperclassmen is shockingly opaque. 

When I first learned about the unionization efforts from a Ukrainian exchange student near the S.J.C.’s Grassy Knoll, I heard a straightforward and simple story. Student workers formed a union because the college paid under New Mexico and Santa Fe’s minimum wage ($15 an hour for Santa Fe)- and the College had been grotesquely averse to the idea of collective bargaining with the newly formed union, after it had reached the 67% threshold of students signing union cards. So much so that the College has been rocked by stark ideological divisions because of this issue, with what the student describes as the Tutors (especially older ones) revealing their worst ideas regarding the College- with reportedly having said that the College was in fact, ruled by the Tutors. Which, I'm sure the Student ‘Polity’ (what Johnnies call their student government) would have something to say about that… Regardless, while my violently pro-labor Socialist heart would love to leave the story there, there is in fact another side of this story. 

According another member of the freshman class (whose primary source is a upperclassman known to me for ‘smoking’ a candy cigarette at the College’s smoke circle, and fooling my classmate so well that they asked to bum a cigarette), the Union is suing the College for their own ineptitudes in communication (which the Union would likely call a 'labor rights violation')- and S.J.C. is currently near-bankrupt because of this lawsuit, due to the fact that they have to retain a lawyer for their defense in the ever-long (how can any college with a freshman class of ~85, survive off of a measly 244.7 Million USD endowment), and has also engaged in what would be reprehensible behavior of refusing to recount signatures after the standard month-long period where workers can revoke their signature of a union card (which- if it were to have resulted in the threshold to make a union among student workers be un-crossed, would have ended the unionization efforts). 

In one sense, this unfortunate series of events is almost comically (and tragically) anti-union. To someone who has read plenty on the union-busting of decades past, and seen plenty of union-busting happen before their own eyes in the modern era (Starbucks & Amazon’s unions come to mind) this is archetypical of what happens when workers work to make their voices and collective power known. There is always some sort of disinformation campaign from ‘management’ (in this case the Dean’s office) on how and what has come to pass with the efforts of the union. There is always a great divide between the ‘workers’, and we always end up more divided than when we started this damn thing. It seems as though wherever the fledgling American labor movement shows up- the workers initially get next to nothing. 

That being said, we deserve better than what we already have. Not just the student workers at my college- but every worker, everywhere. Pay in the western world has been shockingly stagnant since the 2008 financial crisis, and in some countries like Canada, GDP per Capita (a way of measuring a nation’s wealth per citizen) has been falling since the Pandemic. This pay stagnation has also coincided with what was a near 40 yearlong streak of unionization of American workers falling, which despite a slight increase in 2020, is still looking grim. 

One would think that a college that has spent 328 years educating and freeing minds by the means of books, and discusses Marx in its Seminars, would not be so ridiculous when its students try to make a fair wage. But like many American institutions, the oldest Liberal Arts College in America has decided that in order to save money, it not only will- but in fact it should, for the integrity of the school’s ‘polity’- pay its workers unlivable wages. 

Which brings us to the perplexing and uncomfortable question of: Who, as a college, are we? I don’t think I could ever answer that question, especially since at the moment I’ve been here for (just barely not) a month. 

But someone will end up answering that question; as school comes back to session, and that intrinsic question pops back up- whether it be by the Koi Pond, in the Mailroom at Weigle Hall, or in the halls of the renovating Pritzker Student Center- our actions, as a collective, will inform us how this college will develop. All of our actions as students, administrators, and employees will define how this college defines itself. That question of culture is not just unanswerable by one single person- it’s also only answerable in action. 

So, as we celebrate the Santa Fe campus’ 60th anniversary, and the Alumnus of the college rejoin us for the weekend during Homecoming, the third oldest College in America faces the question that all Americans are facing. What have we become, what are we going to do, and where do we go from here? 

One would hope that we don’t answer it incorrectly this year- because quite frankly, the answer will haunt us (students), and the college for years to come. That, and I would like to be able to buy more food after Seminar with the higher work-study wages. 

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CORRECTION POSTED 09/19/2024 at 12:13 PM MT: In an earlier version of this article, the author incorrectly quoted the St. John's Student Workers Coalition for having said that the Administration of S.J.C. committed labor rights violations. While this may be a thing that a representative of the union would be likely to say, they were not asked for comment (nor was the administration of the College) and thus they cannot be directly attributed to a quote without a source.