Posts tagged graduate student workers
Op-ed: Organized Labor Pushes Blue States to Protect Private University Student Workers
September 2, 2025 // Without a quorum at the NLRB, state legislation that codifies collective bargaining for private-sector employees may be key to preserving workers’ rights.
UR graduate student workers hold informational picket ahead of strike
April 17, 2025 // If the university doesn’t agree to hold an election, union organizers would need to ask the National Labor Relations Board to organize one. Organizers say a Trump-era NLRB would be unlikely to grant an election agreement because, during President Trump’s first term, he sought to exclude student workers from unionizing. If Trump fills the three vacant positions on the five-member NLRB, it would have a conservative majority. The university says entering a private election agreement would be unprecedented for the campus. According to UR administration, all current unions on campus became official after asking the NLRB for an election, rather than asking the university directly.
Some Penn State faculty want to unionize as the university considers campus closures
March 11, 2025 // Unrest has been growing among some faculty as the university makes cuts to close a deficit by this summer. An attempt to hold a vote of no confidence in Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi was tabled at a faculty senate meeting last week. Also at that meeting. Bendapudi laid out plans to close some of the Commonwealth campuses. Just how many campuses is uncertain, but none will close before the end of the 2026-27 year. Twelve of the 20 campuses ― Beaver, DuBois, Fayette, Greater Allegheny, Hazleton, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Schuylkill, Shenango, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and York ― are under consideration for closure. They will be evaluated by a team led by several top administrators appointed by Bendapudi; she expects to make a decision before commencement in May.
‘Time is running out.’ University unions rush to organize before the Trump White House
December 17, 2024 // Between 2012 and 2023, the number of unionized graduate student and postdoctoral workers more than doubled, from roughly 64,000 to 150,000. Faculty unions also increased by 7%, from 374,000 to 402,000, in the same period, the report said. Today, more than a third of graduate-student and postdoctoral workers are unionized while a quarter of faculty are. “Among faculty, the drive for unionization has been strongest among non-tenure track faculty,”
Five years after failed vote, Pitt grad students unionize
November 30, 2024 // From 2021 to 2023, nearly 64,000 U.S. grad student workers joined unions. By comparison, only 20,394 students unionized from 2013 through 2020. Today, four in 10 grad student employees belong to labor groups. This trend was, experts say, driven in part by the pandemic and by the administration change from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2021, which ushered in a National Labor Relations Board more amenable to organizers.
Stanford grad students postpone strike timed to hobble grading and advising ahead of finals
November 13, 2024 // “A strike will cause massive disruption to the university’s teaching and research missions,” the Stanford Graduate Workers Union said in a statement, noting that many seminars taught by graduate students will be paused indefinitely, as will other essential functions. “Teaching assistants will cancel their review and discussion sessions, office hours and labs. Assignments will not be graded.” The graduate students unionized a year ago but have yet to sign a contract with the university.
U.S. Has Certified Unions for 50,000 Student Employees
October 31, 2024 // National Labor Relations Board has approved dozens of bargaining units for housing and dining workers, in addition to teaching assistants. The NLRB released data Monday that underscored one way that could manifest itself. The federal agency said that it has certified 54 bargaining units for more than 50,000 student employees since 2022, in the wake of its 2021 withdrawal of a rule proposed by the Trump administration that would have made it much harder for graduate students on private college campuses to form unions.
For Many Students, Labor Organizing and Palestinian Solidarity Are One Movement
September 11, 2024 // The reverberations from May 1 are still being felt on Dartmouth’s campus. That day, undergraduates formed an encampment on the campus green and graduate student workers began a general strike—a carefully-planned, jointly-coordinated challenge to the college’s investments in Israel and their treatment of graduate workers. Both events were announced at a crowded “Labor for Liberation” rally, and the union and Palestine were explicitly linked as two halves of one action by the organizers. “It is through our unions that we can sever Dartmouth’s ties to the war machine,” said Danny Keane, a member of the Palestine caucus of the union, “and build a people’s university.”
The labor movement could prove pivotal this election year
September 5, 2024 //
UC Academic Workers Strike Over Pro-Palestinian Protest Arrests
May 22, 2024 // UAW 4811 is carrying out what the UAW calls a “Stand Up Strike.” Instead of a simultaneous systemwide strike like the one these same workers carried out in 2022, UAW 4811 is calling on its members on individual UC campuses, starting with Santa Cruz, to walk out. The strategy echoes the successful one that UAW’s traditional autoworker members staged against the big three U.S. automakers in 2023.