Posts tagged Higher Education
Op-ed: Celebrating the Decline of Big Labor
September 2, 2025 // New York and California have 17 percent of U.S. workers, but almost 30 percent of U.S. union members. The states with the lowest rates include the Carolinas, which do not allow collective bargaining in the public sector. More states should look to abolish public-sector collective bargaining, as Utah did this year. And more states should pick up where Republicans left off in the early-to-mid 2010s by passing right-to-work laws. The first order of business should be restoring Michigan’s law that Democrats repealed. In 24 states, private-sector workers can still be coerced to join or financially support a union.
Political fights put spotlight on leader of Washington’s largest public employee union
June 13, 2025 // And he didn’t hold back with rhetorical slights against the new governor, calling Ferguson a “pseudo Democrat” at rallies and “Ratfink Robbie Ferguson” on Facebook. The swipes further brightened the exposure of the union’s demands. Yestramski said in a recent interview in the union’s Olympia headquarters that he prefers “adult conversations” to resolve differences, though he realizes what occurred in the legislative session “may have painted a slightly different impression.” But the gravity of the situation demanded a strong retort, he said.
Raises for one union not funded in WA budget, leading to finger-pointing
May 19, 2025 // Leaders for the WPEA say a failure to fund a new contract could impact thousands of state government employees such as food safety officers, commercial vehicle enforcement officers, and wildfire fighters. Some contracts for WPEA locals were funded, including for employees at the Yakima Valley College and for Senate and House Democratic legislative staff. But WPEA contracts for general government and higher education employees, which represent the bulk of the union, were not. Many state agencies employ a mix of those represented by WPEA or WFSE.
Darn good policy’ George Leef on Right to Work and Rethinking Higher Education
April 20, 2025 // While acknowledging some setbacks — “Michigan being key among them” — Leef remains optimistic. “Union membership keeps shrinking. The union clout, I think, is less than it used to be,” he attests. Leef attributes this to a growing awareness among workers that, “unions don’t always represent the people they claim to; they’re oftentimes lining their own pockets.” Leef argues that labor relations were healthier before federal interference. “In our early history, people could sign up if they wanted to, or they were free to not sign up… Then the federal government stepped in and insisted that unions had some special right to represent workers,” he says.
Dual enrollment students’ classes could be disrupted by looming community college strike in Philly
March 19, 2025 // Over the weekend, 97% of the community college’s staff and faculty union members voted to authorize a strike, should their union and the college’s administration fail to reach a contract agreement. The union is demanding pay raises that keep pace with inflation and class size reductions, the return of a child care center on campus, and subsidized transit passes for staff and students. The vote means union members agreed to allow their leadership to call a strike at any time, but the faculty are not on strike.
Commentary: Who Is Big Labor, Anyway?
February 5, 2025 // If the Current American Plurality wants to hold together, it will need to find ways to support workers as a whole, not cheaply chase the union members that BLS and other data reveal to be unripe for recruitment by throwing more traditional members of the coalition under the bus. The Taft-Hartley Consensus approach to labor relations, which Republicans have advanced for 80 years, offers the opportunity for those workers who freely choose to organize unions to continue to do so while protecting the rights of workers who choose not to form unions or choose to work independently. It should not be cheaply abandoned in service to myths about whom the conservative movement is seeking to court.
‘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,”
Higher Ed Unionization Boomed Under Biden. Will That Change Under Trump?
December 8, 2024 // That National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions study noted that the ranks of union-represented grad workers especially grew in the past few years, increasing by 64,000 between 2021 and 2023. That was nearly triple the uptick over the previous eight years. And, according to National Labor Relations Board data released in October, the number of new undergraduate student unions representing housing and dining facility workers outpaced grad worker teaching and research assistant union formation since April 2023. But Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’ recapture of control of Congress could cast a pall over higher ed labor’s progress—or even undo it.
Labor official: Logan Regional Medical Center joining USW will bring wanted change for employees
December 2, 2024 // USW represents over 850,000 workers who are employed in many different occupations, ranging from metals to pulp and paper and have now been growing their numbers in health care, higher education, public sector, tech and the service industries.
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.