The push to unionize Amazon, Starbucks and other major U.S. companies is spreading to another employment sector that historically has resisted worker efforts to organize: America's colleges.
Students employed as residential advisers, assistant instructors and in campus dining halls are uniting to demand better pay and working conditions, as well as pushing more broadly for a seat at the table in setting policies that affect their lives.
"We're definitely seeing a huge change in the way labor is functioning nationwide right now," Katherine Crawford, a 22-year-old senior at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, told CBS MoneyWatch. "Student work is real work, despite the fact that we're full-time students and part-time workers," said Crawford, who has held as many as three concurrent campus jobs while attending Kenyon.
"I'm handling some of the biggest investments the college owns, yet I'm being paid minimum wage to do that," Crawford said of her job moving around costly pieces of art at Kenyon's Gund Gallery. "People deserve to be paid more than $9.30 an hour," she added of Ohio's minimum wage.
Kenyon pays student workers between $9.30 and $11.94 an hour.
Colleges and universities across the U.S. have long employed undergraduates to keep campus dining halls and dorms running, but until recently attempts to organize have been few and far between.
Public universities are governed by state law, while private colleges are covered by the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB...
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