HANOVER — After eight hours of mediation, the union representing undergraduate student workers on campus claims Dartmouth College is not negotiating in “good faith” on a new contract.

According to the Student Workers Collective at Dartmouth, or SWCD, talks are hung up on compensation and federal immigration enforcement on campus.

In late June, SWCD went public with its frustrations with the progress of the mediation, announcing on social media that the college has been unwilling to meet its most important demands.

“Despite good faith efforts on our part to negotiate including altering and removing our proposals in an attempt to settle the contract, the College has continued to push their ‘last and best final offer,’ which 88% of our union rejected on May 13,” SWCD’s social media post said.

The union, which represents 300 undergraduate students who work in dining services and as advisors in residence halls, went on strike for two weeks at the end of May. The college was forced to reduce hours at a handful of campus cafes, and live-in professional staff had to fill in for the undergraduate advisors.

The strike ended when SWCD and the college agreed to enter into labor mediation — negotiating sessions with a neutral third-party who seeks to assist in reaching an agreement.

Following two virtual sessions with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service or, FMCS, no contract agreement has been met.

“We intended to get a contract very quickly after the first mediation session, if not that day,” Harper Richardson, a dining services worker and member of the union’s mediation committee, said in an interview last Tuesday. “The college has not operated that way.”

Dartmouth declined to comment, citing the ongoing labor talks.

“Mediation provides an opportunity for the bargaining parties to build trust and, as part of that, discussions must remain confidential, pursuant to the directions of the FMCS mediator the parties agreed to bring in to assist,” Jana Barnello, a spokesperson for the college, said.

To Richardson’s understanding, the collective is allowed to make public statements. The FMCS’ general terms of service state “services are confidential to the extent allowed by law.”

According to Richardson, the union has made several recent concessions, including nixing demands for paid bereavement leave and for the college to cover undergraduate advisors’ room and board. SWCD also is no longer asking the college to allocate $30,000 a year to a legal assistance fund for noncitizen student workers.

The union has decided to focus on the topics members voted as most important: increasing stipends for undergraduate advisors, and incorporating into the contract the college’s own policy of not allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents in nonpublic spaces without a warrant.

“This policy, while placed on the Dartmouth website, is not set in stone,” Richardson, a member of the class of 2027, said. “The college is not required to follow it.”

By putting the clause into the contract, the union hopes the college would be legally bound to follow the policy until the contract expires, Richardson said.

“Dartmouth has repeatedly refused to include their own policy in our contract,” the union’s social media statement said. “…This demonstrates that the college is more than happy to keep noncitizen students as a bargaining chip if Dartmouth is targeted by the Trump administration.”

The college has agreed to the union’s demand to pay undergraduate advisors for each hour spent in trainings on top of the stipend they receive per semester, Richardson said. However, the union is not happy with the training rate, $8 an hour, which is less than half of Dartmouth’s minimum wage of $16.25. New Hampshire’s minimum wage matches the federal rate of $7.25 an hour.

“Offering $8 an hour for training is not only offensive to the work these people are doing, it’s not a livable wage and it’s not reflective of the needs many of these students have,” Richardson said.

The next mediation session between SWCD and the college is scheduled for Tuesday, July 8, Richardson said.

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