HELU Blog

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

From Carolyn Kube MT (ASCP), Vice President for Professionals, United University Professions (UUP) at SUNY, HELU Steering Committee Member and Outreach Committee Vice Chair Just as faculty and staff say, “Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions,” healthcare workers say, “Our working conditions are our patients living or dying conditions.”  Higher Education Labor United (HELU)

From Jesús Fernández, TUGSA-AFT Local 6290, HELU Steering Committee Member and Outreach Committee Chair During the last weeks of the Fall 2024 semester, the HELU Outreach team met with several members of United Steelworkers Local 1088. USW Local 1088 represents academic and staff workers in colleges and universities around the Pittsburgh area. After the meeting between

From Katie Rainwater, Cynthia Patterson, Leon Hardy, and Maureen McCormick of United Faculty of Florida. On November 1, 2024, the Tampa Bay Creative Loafing reported some 400 services workers at University of South Florida (USF) would be transferred to the Compass Group, a giant corporate “family” of foodservice and facilities service companies. Under this transfer,

Katie Rodgers, PhD. Lecturer at UC Davis, is President of UC-AFT. UC Berkeley administration has called for a hiring freeze for lecturers for the 2025-26 school year. These teaching faculty are represented by UC-AFT and teach 30-40% of the credit hours across the University of California. Union members are organizing against these detrimental prospective cuts.