Over 500 student dining workers at Smith College have won their first union contract a year and a half after announcing their intent to unionize.
The United Smith Student Workers announced in a press release that their contract includes wage increases, a pay scale, guaranteed breaks, paid training, and safety protections. According to the statement, the contract “is one of the largest and most comprehensive first contracts reached by undergraduate workers in the U.S.”
Raia Gutman is a rising senior at Smith College and works as a dishwasher in the dining halls. Workers started union organizing in their first year at the college and Gutman was part of the bargaining committee while the union negotiated the contract. Gutman said they began organizing because they came onto campus at a time of heavy union activity and organizing.
“For me it’s a way to make a difference, even if it’s a small difference,” Gutman said. “There’s so many reasons to feel really hopeless and depressed about the possibility of making any kind of change politically. But this process has shown me that my coworkers and I can take steps to change what we’re getting paid and the way we’re treated at work. It’s inspiring to see that change happen.”
Smith College dining workers announced their intent to unionize in November 2023 and, after school administrators declined to recognize their union, voted three months later in a National Labor Relations Board election to officially join the Office and Professional Employees International Union’s Local 153. The following month, the college’s library workers went public with their union drive and then voted unanimously to join the same local.
Student-workers in the school’s residence halls also voted to unionize in December 2023, deciding to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1459.
According to the union’s website, OPEIU was formed in 1945 and now has over 100,000 members. It covers workers in various different sectors, from nonprofit organizations and credit unions to colleges and universities like Smith.
Student-worker unionizing has been increasing the past few years — a “union boom” — with major wins on a national level occurring last year. For example, last year a bargaining unit of 20,000 California State University student assistants voted to unionize. And according to the National Education Association, just a little over a decade ago there were no undergraduate student workers unions. As of 2024, there were 19, including at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where the nation’s first undergraduate residential-advisor union formed in 2022, and at Mount Holyoke College, where housing workers unionized in 2022.
“This first contract sends a powerful message to student workers across the nation: organizing works, and with solidarity and skilled representation, lasting change is possible,” the United Smith Student Workers statement said.
The bargaining process took some time. Gutman said that the union had a lot of trouble getting the college administration to understand that the members needed higher wages. They said that the college was either proposing no raise or a very small one, which Gutman found “offensive” because of the high costs of living and tuition. In response, the union invited community members at the college to sit in on the bargaining process, which Gutman said the college’s administration didn’t like.
“It’s been really interesting to see how labor organizing is valued differently than other kinds of activism that Smith claims to value,” Gutman said.
They said that there was a large difference between the way that Smith reacts to feminist-oriented activism compared to when Smith’s own employees want more autonomy over their working conditions.
Though Gutman is excited and feels good about the contract, they said workers made proposals that didn’t make the final cut — for example, boycotting Israeli products produced in occupied Palestine or goods from companies that have unfair labor practices. To Gutman, this is only the beginning. The union, they said, has a considerable amount of work to do in order to navigate the high turnover rate that comes with working in a college setting and to make sure the union has an even better contract in the years to come.
In response to questions from The Shoestring, Caroyln McDaniel, the college’s media relations director, said in a statement that Smith College abides by National Labor Relations Board protocols and “is satisfied with the contract agreed upon in good faith through collective bargaining and ratified by our student workers.”
Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who represents Smith’s dining workers and librarians, said that the college’s bargaining team came from different perspectives than the student workers but bargained in good faith.
Goldstein said that the students could’ve been doing anything else with their time at college, but were committed and passionate about organizing and “stood their ground.” He said that now that the contract is ratified, it’s up to the union to engage in collective action through showing solidarity with other groups.
“To defend labor rights [is to] to defend human rights,” Goldstein said.
divina cordeiro is a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They are a summer 2025 intern at The Shoestring with support from the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.