HELU in the News

“By standing together, Higher Education Unions can use their collective power to push for gains that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise,” UUP President Fred Kowal said. “A regional bargaining strategy can help raise the standards of employment for Unions out there negotiating new agreements. As a founding member of Higher Education Labor United, UUP believes […]

The so-called Amherst Compact was written by local and state union representatives who met at a summit organized by Higher Education Labor United in January at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The unions in the compact represent workers in nine states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont

Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students’ and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.

“This compact [is] starting with nine colleges and universities, but we know that this is just the beginning of this latest escalation in this administration’s continuous attacks on higher education,”said Evan Bowman, vice chair of Higher Education Labor United, in a statement issued by Sunrise. “Workers, students, campus community members across this great country are coming

Evan Bowman, vice chair of Higher Ed Labor United, said that the battle against the Trump administration’s efforts to infringe upon academic freedom were being waged with an all-hands-on-deck effort. “Workers, students, campus community members across this great country are coming together to fight for a higher education system that actually works for all,” he

Trump and his allies have a vision for higher education. So warned Ian Gavigan, the executive director of Higher Education Labor United (a national labor formation uniting Higher Education unions across the country), on the podcast The Dig earlier this month. In Trump’s world, according to Gavigan, fewer students attend college, fewer subjects are taught, more education

The second half of the show features an interview with Joe Berry and Helena Worthen, long-time organizers of ‘contingent’ scholastic faculty in the U.S. (now comprising 75% of higher education teachers), and who are now activists in Higher Education Labor United (HELU).

Featuring Ian Gavigan on how the bipartisan neoliberalization of higher education laid the groundwork for Trump’s all-out assault. Workers must unite on every campus, articulate an alternative vision for the university, and fight to win it. Listen to the full episode at The Dig.

Some faculty that are already strongly unionized, like Jenna Chernega, president of Inter Faculty Organization in Minnesota and a professor of sociology at Winona State University, have joined with the coalition Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), a newer group focused on building coalitions of different types of workers on campus and working across the unions that represent

The energy behind the creation of HELU came from people in organizations like the Debt Collective, Scholars for a New Deal, the unions representing workers at Rutgers University (which were forced into joint action by the university’s austerity response to Covid-19), Jobs with Justice, the multiple arms of the contingent faculty movement, and the Bernie