On Oct. 18, Kenyon College filed a statement with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requesting that it confirm that there is sufficient interest among Kenyon’s undergraduate student workers in being represented by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) before proceeding with a multi-week administrative hearing. The hearing, set to begin on Oct. 30, will consider legal questions raised by an election petition filed two years ago on behalf of the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K-SWOC).
The petition seeks an election to determine whether all undergraduate student workers at Kenyon should be represented by the UE for the purposes of collective bargaining. The NLRB has not previously decided whether an election in a campus-wide unit of exclusively undergraduate students is appropriate under federal labor law. The unique circumstances of the petition have required extensive discussion, including how to protect students’ privacy rights in the context of NLRB proceedings.
NLRB rules require that unions demonstrate that they have the support of at least 30% of a proposed bargaining unit to process an election petition. Three-quarters of the students working in the unit proposed by K-SWOC/UE when they filed their petition two years ago are no longer at Kenyon and will never return. And, because the showing of interest is based on payroll data at a single point in time, it does not represent all, or even a substantial majority, of the hundreds of positions that come and go throughout the academic and calendar year.
Given the unique nature of this case, the NLRB permitted Kenyon to file a statement explaining its view that the NLRB should consider the interest among a more recent population of undergraduate student workers and not rely on the original showing of interest from two years ago. Kenyon did so as soon as the NLRB took the necessary steps to ensure students’ privacy, allowing it to provide the UE and the NLRB with the factual material supporting its position while respecting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
A hearing of this scope will demand significant time and resources from all parties — the NLRB, the UE and Kenyon, as well as anyone presenting testimony. It makes sense to confirm that interest in the petition remains significant enough to proceed before expending these resources.