Welcome Reception / October 23 / 6-8 PM Central / Chicago, IL
Workshop / October 24 / 9AM-5 PM Central / University of Illinois-Chicago
Employers and legislators are pushing Ed Tech and Artificial Intelligence through universities and colleges across the USA. Organized labor needs a comprehensive response that builds our organizing capacity through bargaining and advocacy campaigns that allow us to build power around these critical issues.
Higher ed unions are facing similar threats across campuses, whether community college, research institutions, or everything in between, but we don’t have a shared strategy for responding to these technologies.
From libraries substituting their employees with AI agents, to the ever growing presence of LLMs in teaching, grading, and research, from surveillance on campus of students and workers, to the entire suppression of whole lists of academic and professional services that our members perform; the rapid adoption of AI and EdTech begs the question: Who is benefiting from the imposition of these technologies?
Particularly in light of the May 2026 Canvas hack, concernsabout institutional adoption of AI intersect with longer-term apprehensions about the massive costs and data vulnerabilities of privately owned ed-tech platforms. Some higher ed unions are actively bargaining for protections against the imposition of AI and EdTech on their work and for greater autonomy in the use or non-use of existing technologies. Others are searching for answers and ideas for how to fight back against speed-ups, intellectual property theft, privacy violations, deskilling and technological replacement of waged work, administrative and corporate surveillance, and forceful implementation both in the classroom and as a managerial tool.
HELU and our partners in UIC United Faculty AFT Local 6456 are hosting a day-long deep dive into Higher Education, EdTech, and AI. This workshop is aimed at: understanding and producing contract language that protects workers; strategizing together to create a national organizing model against the technoligarchy; creating legislative frameworks locals can take to their state legislatures and Congress; and deepening workers’ understanding of the issue.
We will closely examine bargaining language and handbook policies concerning AI and ed-tech. Members of participating unions will work together to develop and understand the language others are proposing with the idea in mind of creating a framework for bargaining and a coordinated national strategy to win greater control for higher ed workers in all job categories over the use (or refusal) of technology.
Questions? Email jesus@higheredlaborunited.org or amy@higheredlaborunited.org.
Email us to inquire about discounted and complimentary rates for unions that lack the resources to cover these costs: amy@higheredlaborunited.org.