HELU in the News

“The actions across the country on 2/19 are just the beginning of the fight,” wrote Higher Education Labor United, a national organization founded in 2021 to unite workers throughout U.S. higher education, on its website. Continue reading at Global Times.

Ray told me that as far as organized resistance within universities, groups like the American Association of University Professors and PEN were already engaged in pushing back on Trump’s orders, with AAUP releasing a statement called “Against Anticipatory Obedience” in January and joining a legal challenge to one of the DEI orders. But as compared to the hospital setting,

At more than a dozen events across the country Wednesday, workers and faculty at colleges and universities gathered to speak out against what they see as an attack on federal research funding, lifesaving medical research and education.  Continue reading at Inside Higher Ed.

Back in 2020, higher education faced multiple challenges—including student debt, administrative bloat, and the spread of contingency (also known as adjunct labor) in faculty hiring. Five years later, the challenges facing higher education are as significant but different. They include a spate of police actions on campuses, anti-DEI and anti-tenure legislation, academic freedom lawsuits, weaponization of accreditation, and political tests for everything from curriculum

“This really is a new day. In September, all of the unions with members working in higher education — the AAUP, the AFT, NEA, SEIU, AFSCME, UNITE HERE, Higher Education Labor United (HELU) — came together and aligned our vision for the future. This had never happened before. The AAUP and HELU were the only

“I do see a trend of more ULP filings by student workers, but that also is consistent with the very high level of organizing of new bargaining units of new unions, particularly among grad workers and postdocs,” said UCLA Lecturer Mia McIver, the Chair of Higher Ed Labor United, a national organization with member unions

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“The unions are issuing some familiar policy demands for Harris, including calls to boost federal support for schools, end student debt and enact comprehensive immigration reform. Other priorities are a bit more esoteric, such as a request for the vice president to support federal legislation that would guarantee public employees’ right to organize and bargain

“This coalition of unions backing the Statement of Unity is unprecedented, and we are here to build the political will to fully fund higher education,” said Mia McIver, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and chair of Higher Education Labor United, an organization that’s working to better coordinate the higher ed unions. “College