BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published March 19, 2009

After months of what they felt was inaction by the Swarthmore administration, members of the Swarthmore Student Labor Action Project sent a letter to the editor of the local paper, The Swarthmorean, which was published in the Feb. 13 issue. In the letter, SLAP activists urged community members to join in efforts to prevent the inn from being developed through a ballot initiative if proper agreements over unionization could not be reached.

“We had been in communication with the administration but we felt we weren’t being given any consideration on legitimate concerns and issues that as students we have the right to voice,” SLAP member Megan Long ’12 said. “After months of not being taken seriously, I think the ballot initiative was more a way of showing that we care about this issue.”

According to SLAP’s letter to The Swarthmorean, a ballot initiative would prevent the hotel from gaining a liquor license, one of its primary sources of revenue, by overturning the 2001 referendum that originally allowed liquor to be sold in hotels in the Swarthmore Borough.

SLAP is a student-led activist organization which has been pressuring the administration this year to agree to a card check neutrality agreement for the prospective Swarthmore Inn to ensure that workers at any future hotels on campus will have the chance to unionize. The implementation of this policy would allow hotel workers to form a union when a majority of the workers sign cards expressing their wishes to join as opposed to going through the process of holding a secret ballot before recognizing a union.

The letter to The Swarthmorean was intended to inform the residents of the Ville about the possibility of the ballot initiative if proper labor protections were not in place. “Part of the reason for the letter was to have a call for awareness in the community,” JJ England ’09, a member of SLAP, said. “There have been so many changes to the project since its inception that we felt that letting the community know what we were up to was a good idea.”

In the letter, SLAP accused the college of continued inaction and claimed “the campaign [for card check neutrality] must escalate if we hope to make work place democracy at the hotel a reality.” Signers of the letter explained that their strong rhetoric was aimed at encouraging members of the community to become involved in SLAP’s efforts.

The letter, however, evoked a mixed response from The Swarthmorean’s readers. In the following week’s letters to the editor, one Swarthmore resident went so far as to accuse the students of violating the RICO act. The writer, David M. Maola, claimed, “I can’t support this mob-style racketeering,” arguing that what the students were doing was blackmail against the president’s office which “only perpetuates what these students are trying to eradicate and does nothing to move a reasonable agenda forward.” Other letters were not as accusatory but still highlighted the complexity of the issue and the need for discussions without stopping the project completely.

Plans to pursue the ballot initiative in upcoming community elections have since been abandoned, according to members of SLAP, after discussions at the most recent board of managers meeting did not go as well as SLAP members had hoped. England and Long, as well as Maurice Eldridge, attribute this to miscommunications between the administration and SLAP members. “When we got to this meeting we had been told that these communications [concerning SLAP’s efforts] between the administration and the board had been happening on our behalf so they could be kept in the loop,” England said. “But we got there and it just hadn’t happened.”

Eldridge recognized that the communication might not have met the needs of SLAP members, but noted that it was not necessarily the board’s position to be involved in the everyday discussions between SLAP and the administration and questioned the effectiveness of using an ultimatum to pressure the administration and board into making a decision they are not yet prepared to make.

“I think that as [SLAP members] quickly learned at the board meeting, the board didn’t like having a gun put to their head,” Eldridge said. “They would have much rather talked about the substantive issues that were on the table. In both what was printed in the newspaper and what was said at the board meeting, they were presented with the idea that they had to make the particular decision in a short period of time or else. It was very hard to deal with and not the way the board operates.”

Whether the hotel will be constructed at all is still up in the air, according to Eldridge, especially considering the hard economic times. This uncertainty only added to the board’s hesitance in making a decision now about future labor agreements for inn workers. “Given the state of the economy and given that we are working with one contractor who is not going to be the person or company who is likely to be the actual inn operator, we are several steps removed from being in position to influence the outcome,” Eldridge said.

However, Eldridge does believe that some positive discussions did come out of last month’s meeting. “I think what SLAP has achieved is a greater understanding of how the board operates and a promise that the process going forward will be as transparent as we can make it for them and everyone else.”

Although the ballot initiative is no longer being pursued, SLAP is still planning an educational panel and other events in upcoming weeks to spread information about labor issues involved in the future inn. Both SLAP and the administration hope to continue discussions about the possibility of a card check agreement when and if the plans for the inn become more definite. “There are a lot of unknowns right now, but we’ll just have to wait and see,” Eldridge said.

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