After nearly a year of negotiations, the Labor Organization of Community Coordinators has reached a tentative agreement with the University that extends through June 2026, the union announced in a Jan. 18 Instagram post.
Talks between Brown and LOCC concluded on Jan. 17 after the two parties agreed on articles detailing role responsibilities, compensation and contract duration. LOCC members will vote asynchronously to ratify the full contract between Tuesday and Friday, according to LOCC organizer Anna Ryu ’25. A majority of votes are required for successful ratification.
If the agreement is ratified, CCs will receive a stipend of $12,500 — an increase of $2,000 — for the current academic year. To make up for pay not received throughout the fall semester, all CCs will receive a one-time stipend amounting to this difference in pay following the contract’s ratification.
CCs will also receive a 3% raise per year for the duration of the contract — resulting in a stipend of $12,875 for the 2025-26 academic year.
The tentative agreement also includes a “protected rehire process,” clarified role responsibilities and increased flexibility for CCs with other engagements, among other changes, according to LOCC’s Instagram post.
Contract negotiations began in February 2024 and took place over 16 bargaining sessions. During first-year move-in, CCs went on strike for three days, citing stalled progress and alleging that the University was negotiating in bad faith.
At the time, University Spokesperson Brian Clark told The Herald that the ongoing negotiations were a “collegial and good-faith effort on both sides.” The strike ended after LOCC organizers said the two parties had made progress towards an agreement.
But a “period of silence” from Brown’s bargaining team following the most recent session in October led LOCC to introduce a federal mediator in December, Ryu said.
On their Instagram in November, LOCC expressed frustration with the timeliness of University responses to their proposals, arguing that a federal mediator was necessary to make progress at the bargaining table.
The mediator fostered understanding on “where both parties sat on each of the outstanding articles, which helped close them out,” said Gaayatri Godbole ’25, a third-year CC and LOCC member.
“Throughout recent weeks and months, representatives from the University and from LOCC have continued to negotiate in a fair and open-minded manner in an effort to reach a final agreement on a contract,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald. “We hope to reach the end of the process soon, at which point the final contract will be posted publicly.”
Clark did not respond to a request for comment about bargaining timelines.
The union made the most concessions when it came to their stipend, Godbole said. LOCC originally desired an increased stipend that would cover housing and the University’s most extensive meal plan — totaling $17,444 for the 2024-25 academic year — to match what traditional resident assistants receive at many other institutions.
But Clark previously wrote in an email to The Herald that the CC “role is distinct from resident assistant roles at many schools, particularly in that community coordinators are not responsible for enforcing community standards.”
Compensating CCs to cover the amount of full room and board, Clark wrote at the time, would not account for differences between these two roles.
In an August 2024 Instagram post, LOCC rejected the University’s characterization of CCs as different from RAs, stating that they were also responsible for “response to policy violation,” “individual student support,” “crisis intervention” and “addressing facilities concerns.”
But Godbole said that during negotiations, LOCC “just knew” they would not receive compensation for full room and board because the nearly $7,000 difference in pay would be too drastic. CCs are currently paid $10,500 per academic year, according to Ryu.
If the tentative agreement is ratified, the increased compensation of $12,500 will be enough to cover room and the University’s most minimal meal plan.
Ensuring job security also became one of LOCC’s primary goals following their strike in August, according to Ryu. Rather than solely focusing on winning compensation to cover room and board, organizers prioritized “securing protections and guarantees for rehire so that CCs aren’t retaliated against for going on strike,” she said.
Brown’s Teaching Assistant Labor Organization and Graduate Labor Organization helped guide LOCC through the bargaining process, according to Ryu. TALO’s initial interim agreement with the University inspired LOCC to barter for a shorter agreement duration, she said.
“We saw that it is important to not get too long of a contract initially so that you have time to revisit it,” Ryu explained.
“Ultimately, this is our first contract, but it’s a much longer game than that,” she added. “As long as CCs are unionized and willing to come to the bargaining table, I think we can continue securing protections and changes that we want to see.”
Emily Feil is a senior staff writer covering staff and student labor. She is a freshman from Long Beach, NY and plans to study economics and English. In her free time, she can be found watching bad TV and reading good books.
