HANOVER — Over the past three decades, Dartmouth College has undergone a steady expansion, harvesting its growing investments, collecting eight-figure donations and putting up new buildings.
The college’s workforce has grown, too, and its rank-and-file union employees have negotiated for better terms amid the college’s building boom.
Chris Peck, president of Service Employees International Union Local 560, which represents a wide range of Dartmouth’s service and maintenance employees, has been involved in or led those negotiations since the early 1990s.
Peck retired this week, and leaves with the union, and union workers at Dartmouth, in good shape, he said in both a letter to membership and in an interview.
“Our last contract is probably the best contract in the time that I’ve been there,” Peck, 58, said from his Vershire home on Friday.
The current three-year pact, which runs through July 1, 2027, added provisions for longevity pay and on-call pay, and features “good raises,” Peck said.
“I think the college realized after COVID how important service workers really are,” he said.
And the challenge of hiring, particularly of people in the skilled trades, has helped the union negotiate.
Local 560 is celebrating 60 years since its founding, in 1966. Peck, who was hired as a painter at Dartmouth in 1990, said the union’s longevity is part of its strength.
In recent years, the union has added new groups of employees to its ranks, including security staff at the Hood Museum of Art, parking enforcement workers and employees in the Tuck School of Business’ mailroom. Dartmouth College Childcare Center employees joined Local 560 after a December 2024 vote.
Local 560 also represents employees of the Hanover Inn, which the union calls “the first union hotel in the state.”
There were roughly 250 members of Local 560 when Peck first joined; membership is approaching 600 now, thanks both to the college’s growth and to the union bringing new groups of workers into the fold.
The plus for those new groups is “you’re going to gain everything we’ve gained over 60 years,” Peck said.
At the same time, Peck and other officials with Local 560 have been willing to assist groups seeking to unionize through other international organizations. The Dartmouth College Library Workers Union organized in 2023 under the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 93.
“As unions, we try not to step on each others’ toes,” Peck said.
There are many more collective bargaining units at Dartmouth than there were just a decade ago. The Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth organized student dining hall workers in 2022, and added residence hall advisors in 2024. Graduate students also voted in 2022 to form the Graduate Organized Laborers of Dartmouth, or GOLD, under the umbrella of the United Electrical Workers.
Unions also represent technical theater and production workers at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, through Local 919 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Peck tried to add Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team to Local 560. The team voted to unionize in March 2024, the first such vote by an NCAA team. Dartmouth leadership declined to bargain with the union, and promised to fight it to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent it from taking hold.
The team had to drop its bid after the November 2024 election that brought Donald Trump back to the White House. With a party hostile to organized labor taking power, the National Labor Relations Board could have issued a ruling that created a precedent for NCAA teams.
With students earning money through “name, image, likeness” or NIL deals, and jumping from one university to another, collective bargaining should be an appealing solution, Peck said.
“There’s a lot of coaches out there saying that (union) organizing would solve it,” he said.
Peck said he was proud of the basketball players’ effort, and his union’s. “It shows what a little local can do,” he said.
The main reason Peck is retiring from the college is to make his own hours. He runs a painting business of his own on the side, which means he often works seven days a week.
“I’m doing it, I guess, for myself,” he said. Stepping back is “going to open up some free time,” and allow him to wind down his working years on his own terms.
Peck lives on land he bought in Vershire in 2003 that once belonged to one of Local 560’s charter members, a man who also worked as a painter at Dartmouth. It’s a detail that feels uncanny to him, but also right.
There will be an election for a new president of Local 560, Peck said. Vice President Gene Tibbits will likely take the helm, Peck said.
Peck has led the union since 2016, but had taken a more prominent role years earlier, under longtime president Earl Sweet. He helped the union and other workers negotiate with the college during the 2008 Great Recession.
At the time, it took a lot of effort to keep the college from making widespread layoffs, as the value of the college’s endowment dipped. Since then, Dartmouth’s finances have rebounded; its endowment now is worth more than $9 billion.
While times are good now, Peck said there have been hard times, too. He said he’ll be available to advise the union if dark economic clouds gather.
“I think right now the relationship between our union and the college is excellent, and hopefully there’s more fruitful conversations and they continue to recognize the workers on campus,” Peck said.
