The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) notified the College and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) that an administrative hearing to consider the union’s pending election petition will begin on Monday, Oct. 30. The petition, filed on Oct. 18, 2021, on behalf of the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K-SWOC), 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, and K-SWOC’s petition has prompted the NLRB to take up this and other important legal questions at this time.
Among those questions is whether a diverse group of student workers such as the one proposed at Kenyon belongs in a single group for collective bargaining. One key purpose of the hearing is to provide the NLRB with factual information about what Kenyon student workers in various jobs do — how they are hired, what skills are required for their work, what work they perform and under what conditions, how many hours they work, how they are paid, whether and how they are evaluated or disciplined, and other similar factual details. Testimony will be presented via video conference by individuals with direct knowledge of student work.
Initially scheduled for May 2023, the hearing was postponed so that the NLRB could review objections made by Kenyon students to the release of their personal information. The NLRB denied the 105 objections and instead issued a confidentiality order that provides that certain personal details will be redacted from information placed into the public record. The order also requires the parties to keep information confidential, use it only for purposes of the NLRB proceeding, and limit access to it to those involved in that proceeding. Learn more about the information requested by the NLRB and the steps Kenyon and the NLRB have taken to preserve students’ privacy rights throughout the process.