Each of these projects grew organically out of a felt need as we set out on our wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast organizing project. Steering committee members, delegates, and at-large members then stepped up to make them happen. In some cases (international worker organizing, for example) projects have been paused; in others (May Day 2026-2028) organizing has just begun, while some (the anti-“compact” protests) are more like a network. Following the December 6-7 strategic planning retreat in Detroit, HELU leaders committed to pulling all of these together to undergird our big organizing project. New projects will happen as needed. – Helena Worthen, HELU Media & Communications Committee
Elections Committee
Jeri O’Bryan-Losee, HELU Elections Committee Chair and Delegate from UUP
At the November 20 General Assembly, HELU held our first fully online election of the 2026-2028 leadership. You can see election results here. Soon a short survey will be circulated to participating delegates asking for feedback on the process. Anyone interested in joining the Elections Committee can email Jeri O’Bryan-Losee.
Outreach Committee
Carolyn Kube, HELU Steering Committee Healthcare Staff Representative, UUP Local 2190
The Outreach Committee is saying farewell to founding co-chair Sean O’ Brien who has moved on to focus his work in the Michigan coalition. We want to acknowledge with gratitude and give a heartfelt thank you to Sean for all of the work he has done as an Outreach co-chair. Sean has set the committee on a good foundation to move forward with our mission to reach a 100-union coalition. TJ Acena from AFSCME Local 328 will be stepping in as the new co-chair alongside Carolyn Kube from UUP. The Outreach Committee follows up with unions who express interest in joining HELU, from the initial contact through to on-boarding delegates! Outreach also hosts a Zoom Open House on the third Wednesday of each month. These Open Houses are meant to stimulate interest in other higher education unions to join HELU as well as being a starting point to get delegates interested in joining our many committees. Join HELU on Wednesday, January 21 at 4-5 ET / 3-4 CT / 2-3 MT / 1-2 PT
Federal Policy Agenda – Politics and Policy Committee
Jenna Chernega, President IFO and Incoming Vice Chair, HELU
In May 2025, HELU members gathered in Washington, DC to launch our federal policy platform and meet with Congresspeople. On December 3, we gathered in New York to launch a white paper based on the platform written by Marshall Steinbaum and Andrew Elrod of the Jain Family Institute. We are continuing this work with a candidate questionnaire based on the platform for unions to use to initiate conversations about higher education with candidates for state and federal seats. We hope HELU delegates will join us January 27, 2026 to learn how to use the questionnaire and discuss how to make higher ed a major issue in the 2026 election cycle. Register here.
Northeast Regional Bargaining Conference, Amherst, MA – Jan 9-10, 2026
Ian Gavigan, Executive Director, HELU
The Northeast Regional Bargaining Summit will take place on January 9-10 in Amherst, MA. It is HELU’s first attempt at bringing together union locals to plan specifically around coordinating bargaining priorities and efforts. The Summit is being planned as a “pilot” program, in the hopes that it will be replicable in other parts of the United States where there are areas of dense organization and collective bargaining traditions.
The NERB Summit is providing concrete pathways for bringing unions representing the full range of campus workers into the HELU project. As of now we have more than 135 registered attendees from 56 union locals representing AFT, AAUP, NEA, UAW, USW, Unite Here, SEIU, and Teamsters affiliates. Active HELU members may be interested to know that 3 unions representing food service workers and 6 union locals that include a broader array of service and technical workers will be taking part in the summit. In addition, numerous faculty, including adjunct faculty, units as well as units representing graduate and undergraduate workers, postdocs, and other academic, healthcare, and clerical workers are also in the mix. Notably, most participants in the summit are not yet HELU member unions.
Library Workers Organizing
Meghan McGowan, library worker at Wayne State University and HELU incoming steering committee member
In August 2025, library workers across HELU kicked off a series of quarterly meetings. We rallied around labor organizing for both unionized and non-unionized workers, compensation disparities between job classifications, academic freedom for library workers, and self-determination for AI use in our workplaces. We met again in November 2025 for a quarterly meeting, as well as lots of in-between meetings to hash out agendas and move our work forward. Over 150 library workers across the country have engaged in this project so far. It is heartening to be in a space with workers with similar concerns and co-create solutions for that which plagues us (neoliberalization of the workplace, vocational awe, vendor shenanigans, mass defunding of research infrastructure, systemic devaluing of feminized labor, attacks on intellectual freedom, etc. etc.). Spread the word – library workers are causing trouble! Join us for our next quarterly meeting on February 4th at 4PST/7EST!
Media/Communications Committee
Helena Worthen, NWU, Co-chair with Evan Bowman, AFSCME 328 and HELU Sec-Treas
The M/C has excellent paid staff support, an email list of over 14,000 people, an imperfect but working website, some presence on social media and a regular monthly newsletter/blog for which between 10 and 20 people, mostly delegates, write. The point of all this, however, is to capture what goes on across HELU’s wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast span and bring it to our leadership and core activists, while at the same time putting news of what’s happening inside HELU leadership out to our delegates and the public. All of this has to support organizing: bringing more members into HELU. To do this, we need every HELU member organization’s delegates to send in descriptions of what’s going on with their campus and their union and use HELU publications as part of their local union communications materials. We invite you to join the M/C directly and help deal with the realities of communications in the service of organizing. Contact info@higheredlaborunited.org to write for HELU or to join the M/C.
Michigan HELU Group
Dan Birchok, President, UMF AFT-AAUP #5671.
On November 5th and 10th, the Michigan HELU group held a Senate Candidate Townhall Forum, which was attended by over 30 HELU members. The forum, as previously reported, included three Democratic candidates for the federal senate seat that will be open in the 2026 midterm elections: Abdul El-Sayed, Rachel Howard, and Mallory McMorrow. Since the forum, the organizers have collected typed transcripts of each of the candidates’ answers to the preset questions. These will be circulated to attendees and within broader HELU networks early in the new year. We will be seeking your feedback on which answers most represent our vision of higher education, so if you attended be on the lookout for an email with an opportunity to voice your views on the candidates’ answers.
The Contingency Task Force (CTF)
Joe Ramsey, Faculty Staff Union at University of Massachusetts Boston (FSU/MTA)
HELU’s Contingency Task Force (“the CTF”) has met biweekly for over two years, becoming a hub for strategic thinking about the tiered terrain of higher ed labor and a solidarity network for marginalized academic workers. With dozens of regularly attending members, the CTF brings together faculty comrades across ranks, from dozens of campuses ‘coast to coast,’ from large research universities to community colleges. Our events regularly draw hundreds of attendees, and have helped HELU grow, attracting both new activists and new member organizations. This year, we’ve hosted public discussions about the relationship between contingent labor and student debt, the new feature film Adjunct, and the challenges of building union democracy. Most recently, the CTF worked with PSC-CUNY and the AAUP to defend adjunct faculty at Brooklyn College who have been fired for their political activism. In 2026, the CTF aims to help HELU continue to raise up the deep link between the struggles to defend academic freedom and first amendment rights and the broader struggle to win job security, just cause, and due process rights for all. We also hope to highlight the scourge of job precarity affecting higher ed staff, and to help HELU build links to other non-academic workers struggling against tiered job structures and precarity. Contact info@higheredlaborunited.org to join.