Berea Administration’s Stall Tactics Delay Hearing Again

Dear fellow student workers,

Our hearing at the National Labor Relations Board was set to start April 17th. But the Berea Administration did not do their homework to get ready for the hearing, and over the weekend issued a “petition to revoke” to avoid having to produce information to the NLRB, saying they need more time to get ready for the hearing. The NLRB is considering Berea’s request for additional time. Berea student workers did all the necessary prep work with our legal team, and we were ready to show up and testify. We ask the Administration: Why didn’t you do yours?

This is simply a delay tactic. They know, like we know, that Berea student workers are “employees” under federal labor law and will ultimately win the right to a union election. But they think by delaying the election they have more time to run their anti-union campaign in the faint hope that they can dissuade us from organizing.

They are even arguing that some student workers are “domestic workers” and folks who work on the farm are “agricultural workers”, and therefore do not have the right to organize. They are getting these arguments right out of the playbook of the right wing, anti-worker union busters, but apply them to student workers here at Berea without any legitimate legal or factual basis. The exclusion of agricultural workers and domestic workers from organizing rights has an explicitly racist history: in the 1930’s when these laws were passed, many African Americans in the US South were limited to agricultural work, domestic work, and tipped service jobs, and Southern politicians demanded that agricultural and domestic workers be excluded from the protections of federal labor law.

The administration has really strayed from the progressive values of our Berea community. Our hope is that President Nixon has just been misled by her union-busting law firm, and that she and the rest of the Berea administration will come to their senses and stop making these right-wing, anti-worker arguments, stop these pointless delays, and work with us in unity like so many other colleges are doing at this moment.

In Solidarity,

Tatiana Alba, Class of 2027, Customer Engagement Associate, Log House Student Labor
Tristan Tillery, Class of 2024, Residence Hall Coordinator, Student Life