HANOVER — Dartmouth undergraduate student workers have accepted a contract from the college despite it not including key points the union spent months fighting for.

A supermajority of members of the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, or SWCD, voted last week to accept a contract for student dining workers and a contract for undergraduate advisors, or UGAs. The SWCD represents over 200 undergraduate students who work in dining services and as advisors in residence halls.

The agreements reflect what are “largely Dartmouth’s last, best, and final contract offers,” Jana Barnello, a spokesperson for the college said Wednesday.

The new contract, which has yet to be signed by both parties, includes a 3% annual wage increase for undergraduate dining workers and UGAs, a base wage increase for dining hall workers, raising the starting rate to $22.60, and a $400 training stipend for UGAs.

“Dartmouth values the contributions of student dining workers and UGAs, and we are pleased to have reached agreements with the SWCD that reflect this,” Barnello said.

Student dining workers formed SWCD in 2022 over concerns about their exposure to COVID-19 while on the job. Dining hall workers threatened to strike in 2023 and the college agreed to a two-year contract with a $21 per hour base wage, an annual wage increase based on tuition, and sick pay. In 2024, UGAs joined SWCD citing inadequate training and compensation.

After seven months of contract negotiations with the college, the union went on strike for two weeks in May.

In response to the strike, the college offered labor mediation, or negotiating sessions with a neutral third party who seeks to assist in reaching an agreement. After two virtual sessions with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union went public with its frustrations with the progress of mediation, announcing on social media on June 28 that the college had been unwilling to meet the union’s most important demands.

Not included in the final contract are the topics union members voted as most crucial: a baseline stipend increase for all undergraduate advisors, and incorporating into the contract the college’s own protocol of not allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents in nonpublic spaces without a warrant.

“It was a painful and emotional last session on the union’s side,” Harper Richardson, a dining services worker and member of the union’s mediation committee, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We know that our workers do deserve, and wanted every demand we were pushing for. Equally, we knew we needed to come to a contract agreement in a timely manner.”

Barnello did not respond to a question about why the college did not want to adopt the clause regarding ICE agents’ access to campus into the contract.

“Our support and action for our noncitizen student workers is unwavering,” Richardson said.

The collective has been in communication with the New Hampshire Faith and Labor Alliance, a solidarity network of unions as well as local immigrant action coalitions to learn how to respond to ICE if agents come to campus and ensure the college’s refusal to adopt the ICE clause does not go unnoticed, Richardson said.

Richardson categorized the decision to accept the contract, despite its shortcomings, as a preservation tactic. “We’re worried about our union recognition as a whole under the (Trump) administration,” she said.

Unions across the country have categorized President Donald Trump’s actions as anti-union and anti-worker. In March, Trump issued an executive order to end collective bargaining by federal labor unions in agencies with national security missions across the federal government. A U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco blocked the order in May, pending a trial over its constitutionality.

In December, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team dropped its attempts to unionize after the college refused to bargain with players, a tactic that would have forced the players to receive a favorable decisions from the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, and then take the case to federal court.

The players withdrew the NLRB petition rather than take its chances with what they anticipated would be an unfriendly board once incoming President Donald Trump made his two appointments to the labor board.

The collective is “not blind to the fact” that Dartmouth and the Trump administration “are increasingly becoming aligned,” Richardson said, pointing to the college’s move to hire Matt Raymer, a former lawyer for the Republican National Committee as head council.

“Dartmouth is an independent, educational institution,” Barnello said in response to Richardson’s claim. “We are actively advocating for Dartmouth’s mission and for continued federal investment in higher education, which includes filing an amicus brief in support of Harvard on June 9. General Counsel Matt Raymer was integral in making that happen.”

“It’s only a year-and-a-half or so until this contract expires and we’ll be back in a similar position,” Richardson said. In the meantime, she said, the union is focused on building up its numbers by teaching the incoming first-year class about the history of the union, what it means to join a union and the college’s response to unions in the past.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.