[New Brunswick, May 15, 2024] – Higher Education Labor United (HELU) is pleased to announce its Founding Convention, scheduled to take place at the Labor Education Center at Rutgers University and online May 17-19. The Convention will bring together educators, staff, students, and organizers from across higher education labor to address pressing issues facing workers and to lay the groundwork for collective action.
The Convention will feature a dynamic program including constitution ratification, officer elections, panel discussions, and networking opportunities. The Convention will formalize HELU’s structure after years of informal work to get to this point.
At this Convention, we will confront some of the challenges and contradictions frequently encountered in higher ed labor. How do we build a wall-to-wall organization? How do we find common goals and unite across job classifications, when higher ed is so deeply hierarchical? How do we bring in more local organizations from states where there is no collective bargaining, where higher ed unions are directly under attack, or where public education itself is a target?
A national organization like HELU, built by higher ed workers who believe deeply in education as a public good, has the potential to meet these (and other) challenges.
Visitors interested in observing the work of this convention should contact info@higheredlaborunited.org.
About Higher Education Labor United (HELU):
Higher Education Labor United (HELU) is a national organization founded in 2021 to unite workers throughout U.S. higher education. HELU is a coalition of local labor unions and other related organizations that brings together unions that represent staff, student workers, adjunct, contingent, and tenured faculty, postdocs, university health system workers, and others. We come together to create and pursue a unified vision for higher education and to add our strength to a reinvigorated U.S. labor movement. HELU is currently made up of 48 member organizations representing over 200,000 higher education workers. Delegates of these member organizations decide HELU’s direction and priorities. Member organizations also financially support HELU’s work through solidarity pledges.
We envision a future in which higher education:
- Is treated and funded as a social good and universal right.
- Works for and is led by workers, students, and the communities it serves.
- Secures our nation’s democratic future and serves as a vehicle for addressing inequities.
- Prioritizes people and the common good over profit and prestige.
- Redresses systemic oppression and pursues equity along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, indigeneity, age, (dis)ability, and immigration status for students and higher ed workers across all job categories.
- Honors the right of all workers to organize a union and collectively bargain.
Read HELU’s full vision platform to learn more about our vision, the challenges we face, the opportunity to transform higher education, and the commitments we’ve made.
Contact:
- Helena Worthen, Media & Communications Chair, helenaworthen@gmail.com
- Evan Bowman, bowmanev@ohsu.edu
- Tracy Berger, Staff, HELU, info@higheredlaborunited.org
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