HELU Blog

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

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