On Thursday, Oct. 3, the Swarthmore Resident Assistants (RAs) Union and Swarthmore College came to a “full tentative agreement.” The agreement came during the eighth bargaining session of a negotiation process that started in February between the college and the union, formed after a 46-5 vote in December 2023.
The agreement would, if ratified, increase compensation for RAs. Before this agreement, RAs were compensated the equivalent of the cost of housing. However, after tax, this amount was only roughly 85% of the cost of housing at Swarthmore. Under the new agreement, RAs will also be given payments amounting to 20% of their yearly food costs (worth $1,966 before taxes), a $250 signing bonus, and a $250 bonus for senior RAs. Applied to Swarthmore’s 2024-25 student charges, the increases in compensation amount to a 21-23.5% raise in pre-tax income year on year, depending on seniority.
To take effect, the agreement has to be ratified in a vote of the union members and signed by the college. Aashish Panta ’26, one of the lead organizers for the union, expects this to be “a smooth process” given a union meeting on the Sunday after the agreement was reached, where members of the union seemed excited and in favor of the contract. The RAs met with their union representative on Wednesday to discuss the best path towards a quick ratification and estimate that they will vote to ratify shortly after Fall Break.
In a statement to The Phoenix, Vice President for Communications and Marketing Andy Hirsch said, “We’re glad we’ve reached this stage and look forward to when the contract is ratified and executed.”
In an interview with The Phoenix, Panta and Mikaela Gonzalez ’26, another lead organizer, referenced the initial difficulty of this last bargaining session, and later expressed excitement over the finalization of the process and the increases in compensation.
“I think we had initially gone in with higher expectations compensation wise, but pretty soon into the session, they agreed to all of our other remaining minor wording proposals. So the only thing left on the table was compensation, which is pretty much what was discussed for all four and a half hours.” Gonzalez said.
According to the organizers, the college had originally proposed a 15% increase in pay, and started out only with 1% increases to that number. “We were kind of expecting them to make bigger strides as we were cutting 10% from our proposal,” Gonzalez said. But, citing the difficulty of continuing bargaining sessions in addition to the other wins they were proud of, she said they decided to tentatively agree on these conditions after stepping aside to check with some of their union members to ensure their acceptance.
On the less contentious parts of the bargaining session, Hirsch added that “As the summaries of our bargaining meetings show, we all agreed to articles such as Recognition, Health and Safety, and Emergencies and Natural Disasters early in the negotiation process.”
These early articles referenced include an agreement that new RAs would either become members of the union as a condition of employment or pay an agency fee. The college also ensured the RAs that in the event of termination of an RA, the college would still provide housing to that student. This cleared up some ambiguity that Panta said was “very troubling to us.” Finally, the RAs also pushed early on to remove the word “unilateral” from the language describing the college’s power over the RA manual, and succeeded.
Hirsch continued, “Other areas required more time for discussion, information sharing, and compromise. The very nature of any negotiation process is to come together to find common ground.”
According to the organizers, these more difficult areas included the management rights that the college has over the RAs and some campus operations. Notable descriptions the rights the college retains in this new agreement include “Recruit, hire, assign, supervise, evaluate, discipline, and terminate Resident Assistants; to determine the number of Resident Assistants; to decide whether or not to fill vacancies; to create and eliminate positions; to determine the hiring criteria and eligibility to serve as Resident Assistants.” Additionally maintained are the college’s rights to, “Train Resident Assistants; transfer Resident Assistants between buildings, shifts, and locations; set reasonable performance standards; require reasonable physical and mental health standards,” and “Establish, maintain, and amend a Resident Assistant Manual, and/or related policies or procedures, provided that the terms set forth therein are not in conflict with the express terms of this Agreement.”
Panta remarked, “We had initially given a much more pro-union proposal, but Swarthmore’s counter proposal was very much pro-management, where they have control over a lot more than we as a union would wish.” He continued, “To make the language much easier, we referred to contracts that were ratified by other schools. By referring to other contracts, we provided [the college] a language that they were comfortable with. While we don’t feel uncomfortable with this, In an ideal world, we would have loved to retain some of the management rights of the union.”
Panta and Gonzalez do feel more uncomfortable with the compromises they made on compensation, even if they consider the raises they received a win. “A lot of our members were really hoping for [a compensation increase of] 25% or more, but I just don’t think that that was feasible. I don’t think they would have gotten there unless we had striked, and I don’t think that we feel that we have the strength to do that right now,” Gonzalez said. She added, “Our lawyer had said in an ideal agreement, both parties leave a bit unhappy. I feel like that summarizes how both Swat and the union left feeling, where we both gave up more than we wanted to.”
Panta also highlighted the scale of the increase of compensation they had agreed to. “For an individual, [this agreement] means that you get 20% of your food paid for. And that would roughly translate to $2,000 per year. But when we think in terms of an institutional perspective, there are more than 50 RAs. That means we are moving $100,000 of the college’s money to its workers.”
“That’s the broad perspective that we also want to have,” Panta highlighted. “We could have maybe put more pressure on the college by walking out of the meeting. But we also want to see that this is a very small part of the labor movement that we want to have on campus. We don’t want to be spending all our time and energy on this single thing on the RA union.” Panta highlighted that this kind of agreement for workers had “never happened in Swarthmore’s history.”
Panta and Gonzalez told The Phoenix that they also wanted to highlight their successful bargaining for protection for RAs involved in campus activism. For Gonzalez, this was “especially disconcerting with so much increased campus activism recently.” Gonzalez detailed the next steps: “We went back and forth on that a few times where the RAs explained how, while the college asserts so heavily that RAs are students, and initially proposed that RAs are more students than employees, they’re limiting our rights as students to participate in free speech and attend protests. So we secured the right for RAs to continue to participate in protests and activism.”
Also included in this agreement is a notable recognition of RAs as “employees, whose primary affiliation to the College is in their capacity as students.” This classification has large implications because of relevant legal battles around the country on whether students can be treated as employees in the context of labor laws, and past disagreements the union and the college had on this topic. In a previous bargaining session, the college had called the RAs “students with attributes of an employee.” which the union felt allowed the college to avoid complying with labor rights that applied to official employees, although that has not explicitly been identified as the reason for the original language.
Other notable aspects of the agreement include a new grievance and arbitration procedure that Panta feels “protects a lot of RAs from unnecessary disciplinary actions that sometimes colleges can impose on RAs.” Additionally, the agreement includes the formation of a committee with the college for RAs to share their concerns, marking a change from the current setup, where RAs could only share concerns with area coordinators.
Despite the long negotiating process and compromises from both the college and the union, both the organizers and the college reported to The Phoenix that the process ended on a positive note. Panta and Gonzalez remarked on the college’s words as they came to the agreement on Thursday. “They were really happy and we were really happy. It was very handshake-y and lots of congratulations were shared,” Gonzalez outlined. She also shared how the college shared its feeling proud of the students after the process. Panta recognized, “If you’re an administrator who is sitting next to students and bargaining, and you see them equally capable as you, even if you’re a lawyer on the other side, I think to see such confidence and such organization among them, might make them feel like these students are brilliant.” Panta shared “They didn’t hesitate to give out those kind words like share their appreciation on how they appreciated us throughout this process,” and highlighted how after the agreement was reached, the college offered to add in a $250 signing bonus and a provision to retroactively pay this semester’s RAs under the new compensation agreement for the first two pay periods that have happened.
As the college looks to the future, Hirsch added, “The College values all employees and is committed to providing a welcoming and fair work environment with competitive compensation. To echo what we’ve stated in the past, our Resident Assistants (RAs) are valued, trusted members of the College community and a critical component of Swarthmore’s outstanding residential experience. This comprehensive, deliberative process is a testament to the good-faith efforts of both the College and RAs to ensure the RAs continue to be treated fairly and equitably.”
Gonzalez and Panta are also looking ahead. This agreement, if ratified, would be in place for three years. “I guess in three years, the RAs will bargain with the college again. But we are assuming it’s going to be much simpler and easier because we have a precedent now,” Panta said.
Gonzalez also feels that “this is a really joyful win, more for what it means for labor organizing at Swarthmore than what it means for the RAs.” She added, “I feel like the RAs are in a really unique and somewhat privileged position to be able to pave the way for other workers, like environmental services workers and dining hall workers. I personally strongly believe that they deserve a more just contract as well, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with whatever inspiration the RAs paved for them.”
On the agreement as a whole, Gonzalez says “I think it’s a very impressive first contract. I think a lot was achieved for it to be a first contract.”
“This was really intense and exhausting for the entire process. We’re really proud of everyone who was part of the bargaining process, especially RAs and the people who supported RAs,” Gonzalez concluded.
