The union representing Vassar College’s administrative workers appears ready to go on strike as negotiations with the College continue to fall short of a deal. While the College’s collective bargaining agreement with the union, Communications Workers of America Local 1120 (CWA), has a no-strike clause, the agreement’s current extension is set to expire on Sept. 25. If the parties do not agree to another extension by then, the union can strike.
The vast majority of CWA’s members are ready to walk out, said CWA President Jim Gescheidle. On Aug. 24, approximately 99.5 percent of the union voted to strike. Although it is unclear exactly how many of CWA’s 186 employees were present at the strike vote, Gescheidle said it was the largest turnout to a meeting he has ever seen. “I have never had as many members ask me when we’re going on strike or suggest that we should be going on strike…as I’ve had right now,” Gescheidle explained.
The union has been in negotiations with Vassar since March. The current bargaining agreement went into effect in July 2022 and expired on June 30, 2026. It has been extended multiple times during negotiations, Gescheidle said. Six months into negotiations, they do not feel that a deal is close. “If you would have asked me before their last offer, I would have said horribly,” Gescheidle said. “Now I’m going to say terribly.”
Union leadership said they are not taking the prospect of a walkout lightly. “It would be a hardship for a lot of us,” said a member of CWA’s bargaining team, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution. Nonetheless, the union president said the point of no return is fast approaching. “We can’t keep doing this much longer,” Gescheidle said. He added, “Our options are very limited. The College is backing us into a corner where a strike is possibly the only answer.”
In the event of a strike, much of the College’s operations could grind to a halt. Library, mail room, facilities office and Vassar College Store staff would walk out. So would academic departments’ administrative assistants, those working in administrative offices like financial aid and specialized staff like lab technicians, machinists and carpenters.
“We’re so reliant on these workers every day. We go to the library every day, we interact with them every day,” said a representative of the Working Student Coalition (WSC) and Student Labor Dialogue (SLD). Both organizations have been in contact with union representatives and are publicly supporting CWA in their negotiations. “Whether we like it or we know it or not, they’re supporting us… We legit would not be able to survive without these workers.”
“We’re prepared in the event of a strike, but our hope is that the union shares our desire to keep talking so we can reach an agreement that makes sense for everyone,” Vice President of Operations for Technology and Human Resources Carlos Garcia and Associate Vice President of Human Resources Ginger Jurecka Blake wrote in a statement. (Garcia and Blake are also respectively Chief Information Officer and Chief People Officer.)
Vassar administrators did not comment on the state of negotiations, but Garcia and Jurecka Blake explained, “Negotiations are ongoing, and we continue to bargain in good faith.”
Gescheidle and the bargaining team member described the union and College as still being far apart on many bargaining issues. Wages are perhaps the most significant sticking point—just as they were in the 2025 negotiations between the College and service employees’ union.
That remains true after the parties’ most recent bargaining session on Tuesday, Sept. 22. While students, CWA and faculty demonstrators dressed in red gathered outside, chanting “Strike,” the union and College negotiated for nearly five hours. Nonetheless, Gescheidle said, there was no significant movement on wages. “We did make some progress on some non-economic type stuff, but the rest of it, we’re pretty far apart,” he explained. CWA will review the College’s next proposal early next week; the next bargaining session is set for Oct. 9.
The lowest-paid workers under the current wage scale make $18.51 per hour, according to CWA members. With annual two percent increases, that position’s rate has risen from $17.45 per hour, when the agreement went into effect in 2022.
The bargaining agreement’s wage scale is complex: It has four tiers—K, L, C and D—and each tier includes four levels of merit-based pay raises. Most CWA members are in the two lower tiers, CWA members said. In 2022, the entire lowest tier was under $20, but the highest level on that tier has now passed $20 per hour, CWA members said. (For reference, the starting hourly rate for a general position at Target’s Poughkeepsie location is currently $17.75.)
The College’s bargaining team has been very resistant to meaningfully raising the wage, according to Gescheidle. He noted that the base wage in the College’s most recent contract proposal, which CWA received at the beginning of the month, is still under $20 per hour. “We’re aware that starting wages are a central concern in these negotiations, and we are working with CWA representatives to find a fair and sustainable solution,” Garcia and Jurecka Blake wrote.
Meanwhile, many of Vassar’s peer institutions have a much higher base rate for comparable employees, CWA contends. A flyer that the union has been circulating around campus lists 16 peer institutions, including multiple of the Seven Sisters colleges, that give their employees a base rate over $20 per hour. For example, in August, Service Employees International Union Local 200 United—the same union representing Vassar’s service workers—successfully bargained for a $22.60 base wage for its members at Bard College.
Even Bard’s new minimum is below some measures of a living wage in Dutchess County, where both Bard and Vassar are located. Gescheidle and the bargaining team member cited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, which puts the living wage for one individual without children in Dutchess County at $26.24 an hour—nearly $8 more than Vassar’s current base wage.
As the Sept. 25 deadline draws closer, wages are by no means the only thing separating Vassar and the union from a deal. Gescheidle contended that throughout the bargaining process, the College’s negotiating team has brought numerous “retrogressive” demands, meaning proposals that CWA feels have fewer benefits than the current agreement. Some of those demands, according to Gescheidle, include scrapping the merit-based wage increases, which were new in the 2022 agreement; less vacation and sick time; a clause allowing the College to reopen bargaining if health insurance costs increased by more than 10 percent.
“There was a retrogressive proposal presented by the College in virtually every article that was a benefit to us,” Gescheidle said. Vassar administrators declined to discuss any specific proposals they have made to CWA. “The negotiation process is confidential, so we don’t disclose information about proposals or discussions,” Garcia and Jurecka Blake wrote. They added, “The goal of each negotiation cycle is to hear from employees—through their union representatives—about their priorities and find common ground.”
Another thing keeping the parties from a deal, CWA leadership described, is that members want some form of protection from AI’s effect on their jobs. Gescheidle explained that the union has brought the issue up “numerous” times in negotiations but that the College has continually failed to address it. “That was surprising,” the bargaining team member said of Vassar’s resistance to formalizing AI protections.
When it comes down to it, Gescheidle said, CWA is only asking for a few things: “It’s literally looking for some minor gains and a fair wage, and a little bit of protection for AI. I think that’s quite reasonable.”
“Our goal is to work with CWA to reach a sustainable agreement that both reflects the current labor market and supports their members’ longstanding commitment to the Vassar community,” wrote Garcia and Jurecka Blake.
“It’s funny because I feel like Vassar is an amazing employer in many ways,” the bargaining team member commented, “and yet they are being harsher than I expected.”
Taking benefits from CWA members will not significantly improve Vassar’s financial situation, Gescheidle argued. According to the union’s calculations, the entire CWA payroll is under three percent of Vassar’s budget. Furthermore, the bargaining team member noted, any wage or benefit cuts will hit the union’s most vulnerable members the hardest. “The lowest paid workers take it on the chin,” they said. Vassar administrators did not respond to a question about how much of the College’s budget goes to CWA payroll.
While they fight for what they see as a living wage, the bargaining team member said, it can be difficult to watch how money moves at the top of the College. “It’s hard when we’re looking at the pay increases that the higher-ups get every year, year after year…and then they’re telling us, ‘We can’t afford you,’” the bargaining team member explained. For the past four school years, the salaries of the highest-paid administrators—President Elizabeth Bradley, Vice President for Advancement Tim Kane, Vice President for Finance and Administration Bryan Swarthout and Garcia—have had an average compound growth rate of 4.6 percent. Bradley, Kane and Swarthout received pay increases of a little under four percent in the 2024 to 2025 academic year, according to public tax documents. Garcia’s was slightly lower, at just under two percent.
Multiple groups across campus have made their support for CWA clear. The student organizations WSC and SLD are circulating a petition for students to support the union. As of publication, nearly 400 alumnae/i have signed another petition, from a group called Vassar Alumni for CWA. A WSC and SLD representative explained, “As student workers and students, we cannot support our education at the expense of other workers in our community.” Union members will be holding an informational picketing session on Friday, Sept. 25, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at the Bennett Gate on Raymond Ave. and Collegeview Ave.
On June 1, Chair of Earth Science and Geography Kirsten Menking sent a letter signed by more than 70 faculty members in support of CWA to Bradley, Garcia and Jurecka Blake.
“We are writing to express our strong support for Vassar’s CWA union members as they negotiate a new contract with the College throughout the summer,” Menking wrote, according to a copy of the letter she shared with The Miscellany News. “At this time of extreme income inequality, these vital members of our community deserve wages and benefits that keep up with the ever-increasing cost of living… Without competitive compensation, we risk losing their expertise as they seek out higher remuneration commensurate with their experience.”
[Clarification (Sept. 25, 2026): After publication, Vice President of Communications Victoria Grantham told The Miscellany News that the College had published tax documents with errors in top administrators’ salaries in the 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 academic years, which the Miscellany used when calculating administrators’ yearly pay increases. The updated salaries reflected lower year-over-year increases. The average compound growth rate for the salaries in the past four academic years was 4.6 percent, according to the College. Those numbers have been updated.]