HELU Blog

From Maya Cruz, a member of SEIU 925, staff at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies The Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, housed at the University of Washington, connects students, staff, and faculty to the study of labor through education, research, and relationships with working communities and the broader labor movement. Our latest […]

From Joe Ramsey (Chair, HELU Contingency Task Force; Delegate from FSU/MTA and HELU Steering Committee) Our March 16 zoom event embodied HELU’s coast-to-coast and wall-to-wall aspirations, with speakers from across the country representing higher educators across ranks, from tenured and tenure-track faculty to graduate students, adjunct and full-time contingent faculty. Seventy event participants hailed from

From Anne Balay, Delegate to HELU from the National Writers Union and staff with SEIU 509 On March 16th, HELU’s Contingency Task Force (CTF) hosted a zoom conversation about union democracy. I was one of four panelists discussing the tension between growing our movement by uniting across differences in power and pay and ensuring that

From Emily Steinlight, Delegate to HELU from AAUP/Penn and member HELU Steering Committee On Thursday, March 20th, members of the six unions and labor organizations in the Penn campus Coalition of Workers at Penn rallied to present a joint petition against Penn’s anticipatory compliance with executive orders that threaten us all. Members of AAUP-Penn, GETUP-UAW, CIR-SEIU, Penn Libraries United

From Rebecca Givan, HELU Delegate from Rutgers AAUP/AFT LOCAL 6323 and member of HELU Steering Committee At Rutgers, we’re seeing (unsurprisingly) a massive upsurge in engagement from our member in the STEM fields (especially our faculty). When federal science funding has been threatened, for example through the cap on indirect costs, and the slashing of

From Brendan McGovern, Delegate to HELU and President, UUP Binghamton Chapter These are uncertain times for higher education. With aggressive attacks from the Trump administration targeting federal research funding, student aid, and even the very existence of the Department of Education, faculty and students alike are facing unprecedented challenges. Here in upstate New York, United

From Evan Bowman, HELU Vice Chair and Delegate from AFSCME Local 328 Oregon Out here in Oregon we have pretty much acknowledged that federal funding for higher education is a non-starter. Chronic underfunding of our public institutions has and continues to degrade the ability to perform our work. Therefore, organizing has begun for an in-person

From Joe Berry, Delegate to HELU from AFT 2121, City College of San Francisco; Member, Outreach Committee The new 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions in Higher Education by William A Herbert, Jacob Apkarian, and Joseph van der Naald is an excellent update of the last 2012 comprehensive directory issued by the

From Jason Wozniak, Associate Professor at West Chester University, PA, Member of APSCUF, Delegate to HELU from The Debt Collective In 2024, Debt Collective – the nation’s first debtors’ union – became a dues-paying HELU member organization. At Debt Collective we believe that debt is fundamentally a labor issue. When labor is weak and unionization