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Dear UGSDW UMC Members:

We are writing to respond to the points that you raised in the Union Management Committee meeting on April 18, 2025 and your follow up email dated April, 21, 2025. In that meeting you stated that you believe that the UGSDW’s collective bargaining team which was involved in negotiating the 2024-27 contract committed an oversight in failing to bargain on behalf of early arrival and reunion employees to include housing and meals as part of their compensation. You further asserted that you believe that the College had an obligation to bring the interests of these union members forward during collective bargaining.

Over the course of 18 months, the College and the Union of �ֲ���ý��� Student Dining Workers (UGSDW) spent over 52 hours bargaining and ultimately agreed to the Collective Bargaining Agreement ratified by both parties on April 4, 2024. During collective bargaining the College and Union bargained extensively and for hours about rate of pay and compensation. The UGSDW repeatedly and consistently bargained for implementation of a single wage for all student workers, except Community Advisors and House Monitors, and took the position that it was inequitable for student workers to be compensated differently for different positions.1 The College, having initially presented differential compensation, ultimately decided to meet this demand in the interest of moving bargaining forward.2 We invite you to view the bargaining session in which the UGSDW asserted the need for a single wage for all student workers.

The language that UGSDW negotiated for and agreed to in Section 6.1 of the contract met the Union’s demand expressed during bargaining and unambiguously states. “A single base pay level shall be assigned to all Student Worker positions on campus, subject to the exception of Section 6.2.” Section 6.1 sets the pay level for student workers as $13.50 for the 2024-2025 academic year. Section 6.2 sets compensation for Community Advisors as: “(a) a College-designated room grant at the basic room level or (b) a stipend of equivalent value.”

At no time during the 18-month period of bargaining did the Union express interest in differential compensation for any position outside of Community Advisors and House Monitors. UGSDW was elected as the exclusive representative of all student workers and had the sole obligation to bargain on behalf of all of those student workers. In fact, the NLRA’s prohibition on direct dealing limits the College’s ability to communicate with student workers and assess their interests; only the UGSDW has the authority and obligation to directly ascertain student workers’ interests and effectively bring them to the bargaining table.

Nevertheless, because certain workplaces within the College had previously offered room and board in writing – causing individual student employees to make decisions based on that representation – the College has generously extended this additional compensation for reunion workers for the summer of 2025, and for Early Arrival and Late Departure students for the 2025-26 academic year.

The contract does not provide for reopening bargaining on these issues, which were settled during contract negotiations, or modification through an MOU or any other process, and doing so would undermine the contract’s integrity. All parties, having ratified the contract, are bound to abide by it; the College has corrected its error of extra compensation and is committed to not repeating it, but rather to abiding by the contract. Bargaining over and modifying the previously-negotiated agreement for a single employee group is not contemplated by the contract and would set an inequitable precedent for bargaining over any issue that arises in any one of the over 250 campus workplaces.

The Union successfully negotiated a 41% pay increase for their members. The College agreed to this extraordinary increase in good faith that the Union represented all its members’ interests by demanding a single base rate of pay. We believe the contract is an accurate reflection of the intentions of both the College and UGSDW for the duration of the contract.

For the reasons delineated above, the College cannot entertain modification of the contract based on new and evolving interests of new UGSDW leadership. Likewise, the College is focused on the accurate implementation of the agreement by working with individual workplaces to ensure that they are fully aware of the terms and conditions of the agreement and their obligation to uphold the contract as written.

As outlined in our correspondence to the Union on March 27th, the College is committed to honoring the offers of complimentary room and board to all affected student workers. Going forward, the College does not intend to offer early arrival, late departure or summer room or board to any student workers per the unambiguous language of Article 6. Please refer to our letter dated March 27th for the details of the College’s position.

FOOTNOTES

[1] (last accessed April 23, 2025), (“I think we remain interested in not having pay differential, a pay differential between student workers. . . . And we are going to be interested in talking about a set base wage across campus.”).

[1] , �ֲ���ý��� at 51:30-51:43 (last accessed April 13, 2025), (“So you all expressed an interest to us of having a single wage a universal—I’ll call it a universal wage—for your membership so we have moved away from . . . a tiered wage system to meet you.”); id. at 52:56-54:26 (“The College does not think that it is fair that all employees be paid the same because there are distinct differences in the nature of various positions. And it’s going to be an operational problem for the College to do this. But we heard you when you said from your philosophical standpoint, you wanted the same wage. So we’ve moved to that, and that’s a substantial role. . . . So I just wanted to point that out, that the College has made a substantial movement and that we’ve done so basically in spite of the problems that we see.”).

Cordially,

Jana Grimes

Jana Grimes

Vice President for Human Resources

she/her/hers ()

1213 6th Avenue, �ֲ���ý���, IA 50112

PH: 641.269.4818