HELU’s original (2020) Vision Platform framed higher education as a public good and was endorsed by over 100 local unions and labor-adjacent organizations. Building on this Vision Platform in October 2024, HELU presented a Unity Statement signed by 9 peak national and international unions. In February 2025 these unions formed Labor4 Higher Education, or L4HE. In May 2025 HELU formally presented our Federal Policy Agenda at a press conference in Washington, DC. Following is a condensed version of that message, delivered by Jenna Chernega. – Editor
From Jenna Chernega, President of the Inter Faculty Organization (IFO)
Professor of Sociology at Winona State University in Minnesota, President of the IFO (Inter Faculty Organization) and Delegate to HELU and Co-Chair of the Politics & Policy Committee.
On May 22nd, HELU members and allies gathered in the AAUP offices in Washington, D.C. to launch the HELU Federal Policy Agenda. Senator Ed Markey (MA) led off with comments about the Trump regime’s attacks against higher education, scientific researchers and international students.
I had the privilege of MC-ing the event and was proud to introduce each of my colleagues. The HELU members and allies who spoke were Rafael Jaime, United Auto Workers (UAW) 4811; Chris Townsend, United Electrical Workers (UE); Marissa Johnson Valenzuela, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) 2026 at the Community College of Philadelphia; Jason Wozniak, Debt Collective; Marshall Steinbaum, Jain Family Institute and Todd Wolfson, American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Vice President of AFT. We were also joined by Representative Mark Takano (CA-41). The press conference was livestreamed by the Debt Collective and the video is available here.
Here are my comments to our listeners:
Today, higher education workers and students stand at a crossroads. One side offers a version of higher education that is focused on attacking higher education workers, students, and missions. It cares more about the demands of corporations, with an emphasis on narrowly training workers for existing employers. It focuses on cutting jobs, quashing free speech, challenging independent inquiry, and fitting students into tight boxes.
Against this vision of higher ed that we are getting from the right, today we as Higher Ed Labor United and our allies are standing together to offer a real alternative that works for all of us.
Our wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast organizing project is more expansive, focused on the needs of students, workers, and our communities. Our vision prepares students with skills for not just their first job out of college, but for rich and varied lives as active citizens in a democracy. The prosperity of the United States, indeed the future of our democracy, is dependent on choosing the vision of higher education that is open and accountable to all.
What we propose today is a federal policy platform that makes that vision of higher education possible, achievable, and sustainable in the United States. It draws from the experiences of students, faculty, and higher education workers from across the country.
First, we must make postsecondary education, including community college, four-year institutions, technical training, pre-apprenticeship programs, and other post-high school pathways free as a right. Anyone with a high school degree deserves a path to a fulfilling career through public institutions that are free to students and ensure that students will not enter into debt to obtain postsecondary education.
This means creating a national program to make postsecondary education free at the point of use and not limited to free tuition and fees. We must account for additional expenses, including books, housing, food, tools and/or necessary class supplies, etc. These extra expenses are often the part of the cost of college that makes it inaccessible to low-income students, students of color, and so-called “nontraditional” students.
Students should have the right to broaden their experiences and perspectives through general education programs across a broad range of academic fields and disciplines, as well as develop skills in focused areas.
Higher education must be able to accommodate everyone who wants to learn and grow—from future electricians and nurses to those wanting to study biology, music, or a foreign language.
In addition to expanding the scope and options of higher education, it’s time to recruit individuals who have not considered college as part of their future to the benefit of the whole country, which depends on higher education for basic research, employment training, ethical and civics education.
But we cannot simply throw open the doors of higher ed without ensuring that workers are at the center of the process. It would be easy to make college free by cutting jobs, downsizing curricular options, ballooning workloads, closing physical campuses and pushing students online, and outsourcing all manner of services. Instead, we need to make sure higher ed jobs in college towns, big cities, and everything in between are good, union jobs that allow workers, families, and communities to thrive.
We don’t just have an obligation to provide this expansive vision of higher education for all Americans. Indeed, Americans have a right to this kind of education. Americans have a right to institutions that focus on teaching, learning, discovery and innovation.