Amherst College is exploiting its employees. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, the College has treated them without respect or dignity in order to preserve profits and enrollment. There are many ways to start examining this structural inequity, and they all point to ways that we as students can build our solidarity with staff members and pressure the college to change its employment system so that it uses resources equitably and treats employees fairly.

While the truth about the labor system here at Amherst has been clear to some for a very long time, it became especially obvious during Fall 2021 when the nationwide labor shortage, new dining hall protocols, and the high enrollment of students on campus led employees to share more information about the labor shortage, lack of pay, and lack of benefits. When it became impossible to ignore these conditions, many students and staff began to start thinking more broadly about the deep-running issues with the entire system of employment here at the college. The Amherst Student reported extensively on these issues, detailing the personal opinions, struggles, and inequities faced by dining employees. Such struggles include many employees’ lack of health insurance and other benefits, wages well below what is necessary for living costs in the Pioneer Valley, and a strictly hierarchical workplace environment that does not leave room for employees to ask for change.

Awareness of these issues is a step in the right direction, but the momentum can’t stop there. As students, we have a responsibility to do more than just think about the situation — and there are a wide range of ways that we can take action to pressure the administration to use its resources to support and care for employees.

As the Amherst Labor Alliance, we are working to provide a platform for college employees and a way for students to show solidarity by leveraging our position to pressure the administration. Together, we can create the kind of pressure that will force Amherst to raise its employee wages and begin providing benefits to all those employees who need them. For all who are interested in joining Amherst Labor Alliance to support these efforts, please follow @amherstlabor on Instagram, email amherstlaboralliance@gmail.com and join our teach-in, which will be occurring on Thursday, March 31 at 7 PM.

Part of this pressure needs to include solidarity between students and staff. The college’s use of casual employment — an employee classification system that determines which employees are allowed health insurance, paid sick and vacation time, and a number of other important employment benefits — mirrors its treatment of first generation, low-income students. This withholding of resources reflects the lack of resources, including health insurance and mental health support, that FLI students at the college experience. This connection cannot be ignored and provides the basis for the solidarity we as students need to build with staff.

Student-staff solidarity was put to use in ALA’s activism that brought this inequity to light, and eventually the college announced its decision to convert 23 dining services employees from casual to benefited positions, providing them with a wage increase and the range of employment benefits the college offers, notably including health insurance. This change tangibly impacted the lives of many employees, and shifted the dining hall away from depending so heavily on the labor of unbenefited employees.

But our celebration of this decision should, if anything, reveal exactly how deeply flawed the current labor situation at the college is. Sitting here at our 3.775-billion-dollar-endowed institution and celebrating the fact that 23 employees — many of whom have been working 40 hours a week for several years to keep this place running — just received the human right to health insurance is ridiculous. The irony feels even deeper when we examine the content of many classes taught here on this campus — which push students to think critically about the structures of capitalism and white supremacy which shape and allow inequity to perpetuate — and the very mission of this college itself, for students to “advance knowledge, engage the world around them, and lead principled lives of consequence.” How can we continue to contribute to this college, use its resources, and further its lessons as we make our way into the world, without examining the hypocrisy of its very own structural inequity that affects students and employees alike?

With a multi-billion dollar endowment, the fact that Amherst is not providing healthcare for all employees who need it should be unbelievable. Programs to subsidize health insurance for students exist, why not employees? Since Amherst doesn’t provide health insurance for non-full time employees, many workers are left to pay for necessary treatments, medication, and operations out of pocket, meaning that the money they take home at the end of the day is even less.

In a country where millions are uninsured and healthcare costs are continually growing, the College has the opportunity to make sure that everyone in our community is able to survive — but is not doing so. The college is hoarding its vast amount of resources in a multitude of ways. The college has the ability to pay its employees a living wage, yet many still struggle to pay monthly bills and other costs.

Paying people a living wage is an essential part of upholding our mission as a college, “Terras Irradient,” to spread light to the world. Spreading light means sharing not just our knowledge, but our resources with all of those who need them, including the employees of this college. Instead of taking actions in the interests of the college as a business, Amherst should care for its employees as an essential part of building community across campus, the Pioneer Valley, and the country. ■

— Amherst Labor Alliance