HELU Blog

By Ian Gavigan, HELU Executive Director. HELU’s vision of higher ed organized wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast rests upon the idea that union locals are the starting point for an organizing strategy that builds power at the sectoral level in order to wage a national fight against our broken system of higher ed finance and governance.  On […]

by Brendan McGovern, UUP Binghamton Chapter President. May Day, observed each year on May 1, is one of the most important days in the global labor movement. Its origins trace back to the struggle for the eight-hour workday in the late 19th century, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States went on

by Joe Berry, Delegate from AFT 2121 and Helena Worthen, Delegate from NWU A general strike on May Day 2026 – what does that bring to your mind? Thousands of workers marching with picket signs and shouting angry slogans? That’s the classic media image. But it’s not actually what a general strike mostly looks like. What

By Chris Robe, UFF (United Faculty of Florida) and Florida Atlantic University Ever since Florida became ground zero for the attacks against public higher education roughly five years ago, many misconceptions circulate regarding how academic freedom functions down here and the ways in which it is being compromised. A recent job candidate confided to a

From the HELU Michigan Coalition: HELU has been quietly engaged in regional organizing for the past year. There are regional organizing projects going on in the Northeast, around the Philadelphia area, in the Pacific Northwest and in New Mexico, among others. The work of these projects is specific to their region. This is a report

Bret Benjamin, United University Professions and Co-Chair, HELU National Coordinated Organizing Committee The participants in the Northeast Regional Bargaining Conference produced a higher ed bargaining platform they called the Amherst Compact to guide coordinated collective bargaining. It is now gathering formal endorsements from the 55 unions that sent participants as well as other locals in the

Karin Rosemblatt, HELU delegate and UAM-UMD (United Academics of Maryland, University of Maryland) President In states where there are holes in public sector collective bargaining enabling legislation, the fight for the right to unionize and bargain has to take place in the legislature and on the ground. On February 10, 93 University of Maryland-College Park colleagues

Brendan McGovern, UUP (United University Professions), Binghamton Chapter President On February 17 and 18, UUP member Alcibiades “Alex” Lazaro Ramirez González and his husband, CSEA member Yannier “Yan” Vázquez Hidalgo, walked out of federal detention and back into the arms of their union family. Their ordeal began last October when they arrived at a scheduled