Student workers at Coop Fountain, Cafe 47 and Milk & Honey rally before union election

On Dec. 3, more than 45 students and workers rallied outside the Coop fountain in support of the upcoming union election for Coop Fountain, Cafe 47 and Milk & Honey student workers.

Speakers at the rally included Coop, Cafe, M&H student workers, as well as Occidental College student worker and union organizer Casey Scott, UCLA Grad Student and Rank and File for a Democratic Union member Kye Shi HM ‘22, Pomona dining worker Rolando Araiza and Pitzer dining hall worker Jose “Paso” Ochoa.

In April 2024, 85% of Coop, Cafe and M&H student workers signed union cards to join the Pomona dining workers union and legally demanded that Pomona College bargain with student workers to be included under the union contract.

Pomona refused to recognize the unit, instead filing a petition for the National Labor Relations Board to run an election for student workers to form a separate unit from the existing dining workers’ unit. UNITE HERE! Local 11 contested the petition, resulting in the NLRB holding a hearing to determine whether there was a legal basis for Pomona to refuse to allow student workers to join the existing unit.

In late November, the NLRB released their decision, ruling that student workers could vote to join the existing unit and be included in the same contract as dining workers, and scheduled an election on Dec. 6.

Amrit Bajwa PO ‘25, a student worker at the Coop Fountain who testified in the NLRB hearing, spoke about his experience being questioned by Pomona’s lawyers.

“Pomona hired a lawyer who was sitting in an office in downtown LA with the entire skyline behind him. And it was clear that this lawyer was being paid in that one hour more than I’d been paid in my two years of working at the Coop and Cafe,” Bajwa said. “It just goes to show that Pomona is willing to do whatever it takes to maximize their profit without actually counting the voices and opinions of their students.”

Representatives from student worker unions from Occidental College and UCLA also spoke in support of Coop, Cafe 47, and Milk & Honey workers.

Scott, a student from the bargaining team of Occidental College’s Rising Occidental Student Employees of SEIU 721, spoke about how the Claremont Student Workers Alliance had inspired Occidental College students to organize their coworkers and form the Occidental Labor Alliance. In June 2024, more than 1,000 Occidental undergraduate student workers voted to join SEIU Local 721. 

“Claremont Student Worker Alliance was something that two Oxy students went to a meeting two years ago. And they came back from that meeting completely inspired to start what we now know at Oxy as Oxy Labor Alliance, which does work to help organize our full-time staff on campus,” Scott said. 

“I’m so happy to be alongside you guys today as you guys fight for that same fight, that fight of undergraduate organizing in undergraduate labor solidarity across all colleges across this country. Places like Western Washington, Wesley and UCLA that have seen a major uptick in labor, solidarity and labor organizing over these past few years.”

Kye Shi HM ‘22, a PhD student at UCLA and member of UCLA Rank and File for Democratic Union, also spoke in support of Claremont student workers. 

“On behalf of all of the UCLA rank and file workers, we are counting on you and we have your back because your fight is our fight. The repression that Pomona is enacting on you is the same repression that we face at UCLA. Your struggle for fair wages is our struggle for fair wages, and it is also the struggle for divestment and reinvestment in our communities and justice on every single front because none of us are free until all of us are free.”

Note: this story was published online on Dec. 8, 2024, but was backdated to Dec. 5 2024 to match the publication time of the Instagram version of this post.