HELU Blog

By Caro Pirri – Steward, United Steelworkers Local 1511. Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh. Member, HELU Media and Comms Committee On August 14th, I sat down with Jen Goeckeler-Fried, Chair of the Bargaining Committee for the staff union at Pitt, to talk about her experience with bargaining. We met during a United Steelworkers

by Nick Temple, HELU Organizer On June 30, Spelman changed its cleaning contractor from Aramark to Integrity National Corporation. The workers under Aramark had been unionized and covered by a collective bargaining agreement for many years. According to Workers United Southern Region, when Integrity took over, almost none of the existing Spelman cleaners were hired

By Michael Ziegler, GLO-AFT Local 6516 President and HELU Delegate In July, the Graduate Labor Organization at Brown University (GLO-AFT Local 6516) partnered with HELU to host a workshop at which representatives of different unions could discuss and strategize around discrimination and harassment and grievance procedures. This began as a project of HELU’s Northeast Regional

by Thomas Gokey, HELU Delegate from the Debt Collective HELU member organization the Debt Collective began in 2014 with a campaign to organize students who had been defrauded by predatory for-profit universities. Fifteen people went on a debt strike and nearly 10,000 more filed claims with the Department of Education. All these debtors demanded the Department

by Chasidy Fisher Hobbs, United Faculty of Florida, UWF chapter President, Senator and HETAC Chair, HELU, FEA, NEA and AFT, Delegate Over the past few years, Florida’s higher education system has undergone an aggressive, state-led restructuring. Orchestrated by Governor Ron DeSantis, his political appointees on the Board of Governors and the Florida Department of Education, and

by Payam Barghi, Interim Vice President and Chief Negotiator of Gavilan Student Workers Union (GSWU) Gilroy, California calls itself the “Garlic Capital of the World” and sits just thirty miles south of Silicon Valley. Close enough to be a commuter town for Bay Area workers, but just far enough to still be a farm town.

by Tessa Barber, University of South Florida Graduate Assistants United (UFF-USF-GAU) To Be a Florida Grad Worker To be a graduate student worker in Florida is to live pulled between two identities the state is actively trying to tear apart. As students, we face mounting threats to our academic freedom, our funding, our free speech,

by Faith Ericson, delegate to HELU from the Minnesota Inter-Faculty Organization (IFO) After serving in two educational unions, I have seen real work to improve conditions for contingent faculty. My roles have included executive committee service, contingent faculty committee work, bargaining, and legislation. One obstacle is encouraging contingent faculty involvement. Not because unions do not