About Us
A coalition for higher education
Higher Education Labor United (HELU) emerged from the concerted efforts of campus workers across the United States. Allied labor organizers coordinated a July 2021 summit with 50 union locals to plan a national strategy. Summit attendees, who included faculty, staff, and students working on all types of campuses, developed a shared Vision Platform. Members from AAUP, AFSCME, AFT, CWA, NEA, SEIU, the Teamsters, UAW, and UE, as well as many independent locals attended. Endorsers of the vision platform at that first summit became the initial members of HELU and launched the next phase of outreach and planning.
Organizing work has continued since that first summit, including a second three-day virtual summit in February 2022. Over 130 unions and allied organizations, representing over 550,000 workers at community colleges, professional schools, and major research institutions across twenty-eight states have now endorsed HELU’s Vision Platform. Many of these unions are bargaining contracts this year, and the coalition is organizing people and empowering them to join in even larger struggles. That is exactly what a progressive, cross-class, national labor movement focused on workplace rights, dignified wages, and racial, gender, and environmental justice can build.
HELU delegates and committees meet regularly to move the organization’s vision forward and coordinate work among union organizers. We welcome new participants in this work!
Our Vision
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.
governance
General Assembly
HELU’s General Assembly meets four times per year. The General Assembly makes HELU’s most important financial, strategy, and policy decisions. It is composed of delegates representing each of HELU’s member organizations, chosen by those organizations. The number of delegates from each organization is determined by the size of that organization’s membership.
The number of General Assembly delegates from any member union or organization is determined as follows:
- 2-500 members = 1 delegate
- 501-1,000 members = 2 delegates
- 1,001-3,000 members = 3 delegates
- 3,001-5,000 members = 4 delegates
- 5,001-10,000 members = 5 delegates
- For every additional 5,000 members over 10,000, member organizations are allotted an additional delegate.
Steering Committee
HELU’s steering committee is elected by its general assembly. Steering committee members are all delegates from their unions already serving in the General Assembly. Currently, Fall 2022 through early Winter 2023, an interim steering committee, elected by the interim general assembly.
Chair: Todd Wolfson, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers University
Vice Chair: Rafael Jaime, UAW 2865, University of California system
Secretary-Treasurer: Levin Kim, UAW 4121, University of Washington
- TJ Acena, AFSCME 328, Oregon Health and Science University
- Anne Balay, SEIU Local 509, Higher Ed Organizer, Boston, MA
- Bret Benjamin, Chief Contract Negotiator for United University Professions, University at Albany, SUNY
- Joe Berry, Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL), and AFT 2121 (City College of SF)
- Ian Gavigan, Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education
- Ariana Jacob, PSUFA AFT-Oregon, Portland State University
- Rafael Jaime, UAW 2865, University of California system
- Geoffery Johnson, AFT Guild Local 1931, AFT Adjunct/Contingent Caucus (AFT-ACC), San Diego Community College District
- Levin Kim, UAW 4121, University of Washington
- Aimee Loiselle, Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education and CSU-AAUP, Central Connecticut State University
- Trent McDonald, Washington University Undergraduate & Graduate Workers Union/Rutgers AAUP-AFT
- Mia McIver, UC-AFT
- Joe Ramsey, Faculty Staff Union at the University of Massachusetts Boston (FSU-MTA-NEA)
- Nicola Walters, California Faculty Association (CFA), Humboldt State University
- Todd Wolfson, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers University
- Helena Worthen, National Writers Union, University of Illinois LEP, emeritus
A regular steering committee will be elected in early 2023 by delegates of the first cohort of HELU member organizations. Terms for steering committee seats are two years
The steering committee includes HELU’s officers (Chair, Vice Chair, and Secretary-Treasurer) and a designated seat for each of the following job titles and categories:
- Part-Time Adjunct/Contingent Faculty
- Full-Time Contingent Faculty
- Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty
- Student Workers
- Service and Maintenance Staff
- Clerical, Technical, and Research Staff
- Healthcare Staff
- Community Colleges
- Statewide Systems
- Non-collective bargaining advocacy organizations
- Non-collective bargaining jurisdiction organizations
Committees
Working committees such as Organizational Structure, Constitutional Review, and Budget were formed in early 2022 to develop a democratic, transparent, durable, and adaptable structure that will advance HELU’s mission and build the long-term framework necessary to organize across the higher education sector. The work of these committees resulted in HELU’s Constitution & Bylaws, a proposed budget for the first two years of HELU organizing, an interim steering committee, and a plan to incorporate as a 501(c)(5) non-profit and establish HELU as an organization.
As we look to the next two years of organizing, we seek to develop collective processes to learn and build with one another in each of the following three program committees. Members of a HELU member organization or HELU at-large members are welcome to join in committee work.
The Committee for Political Advocacy (CPA) organizes political, legislative, and regulatory campaigns that align with HELU’s vision and goals and provides support for member organizations to build political and legislative organizing capacity. We build relationships with legislators, student groups, labor coalitions, and community groups. To implement the policies crafted by the Policy Development Committee, we identify key political campaigns and develop material to support our unions, organizations and coalitions to nurture broad involvement in the legislative process across our membership.
What we (will) do:
- Make sure rank-and-file voices are heard on a national level.
- Learn from members about their key legislative struggles.
- National power mapping.
- Support member organizations with political organizing, including training members interested in political organizing or running for office.
- Organize a network of members involved in local, state, and regional campaigns.
- Advocate for political organizing for the common good at the local and regional levels, including mutual aid, in concert with our national political vision.
- Build relationships with legislators, student groups, labor coalitions, community groups.
- Nurture broad involvement in the legislative process across our membership.
The National Coordinated Organizing Committee (NCOC) aligns local struggles into national movements. We must defeat administrators’ divide and conquer tactics with unite and fight tactics, overcoming constructed hierarchies and institutional structures of oppression that stand in the way of local success. We connect unions and coordinate coalition work among higher education labor organizations in a way that increases worker power. We support local organizing with resources and sharing the experiences of campus workers elsewhere.
What we (will) do:
- Align goals among unions and link local campaigns.
- Organize concrete solidarity assistance (including trainings, one-on-one conversations, contract repositories, share-outs of victories, tactics, strategies, and tools) for local struggles.
- Troubleshoot, share lessons, and provide support for on-the-ground higher education organizers.
- Support existing and emergent campus labor coalitions and campus-community coalitions.
- Craft a popular narrative for our collective struggle for higher education as a universal right and a public good that reflects and advances justice for all workers and communities.
- Work collectively to identify strategic sites of oppositional power that confront our campuses as shared adversaries and enable strategic actions otherwise beyond the scope of a single local, college, or university.
- Build strike-readiness and direct action capacity by establishing infrastructure for mutual aid.
The Policy Development Committee (PDC) develops policy language for legislative campaigns based on the needs of campus rank and file and our collective vision. We bring workers’ expertise to bear on policy that affects us and our communities. Until now, there has been no equivalent to the Right’s policy machines, so we must build an alternative for our movement.
We translate movement goals into operable public policy informed by our vision and principles, including legislation and regulation with an eye toward implementation at federal, state, and system levels. We work in coalition with allied formations, including student and social justice movements.
What we (will) do:
- Generate the technical language and advocacy frames we need to advance the higher education labor movement. In all areas, we will be responsive to and align our policy work with HELU’s core values and members’ specific needs.
- Set national priorities using concrete policy vehicles. With movement allies, we build out a national vision to set the labor and higher ed movements’ agendas.
- Drawing on creative campaigns and our movement’s deep expertise, we will develop novel interventions to advance our priorities.
- Partner on state and regional fights, building legislative and regulatory tools for local, state, and regional coordinated campaigns.
- Align best practices to create a repository of model laws and regulations.
- Respond to a changing policy terrain by tracking and analyzing policy developments that impact higher ed workers.
Outreach Committee
We develop and implement strategies to build HELU’s membership and power. Collaborating with other committees on communication, priority-setting, and power-building strategies, the Outreach Committee helps grow HELU’s membership while strengthening ties with current member organizations, coordinating shared actions, and more.
Coordinator: Kjerstin Johnson, PSUFA – AFT Oregon Local 3571
Media & Communications Committee
We develop communications that are timely, effective, and clear, that push forward HELU’s vision platform. We broadcast HELU’s vision and mission broadly through our website and social media, written content, and coordinated messaging.
Coordinator: Tracy Berger, United Campus Workers Colorado (UCW Colorado-CWA Local 7799)