Posts tagged non-tenure-track faculty
USC faculty groups vote to unionize and university vows to challenge it
June 7, 2026 // Not all eligible USC faculty have been supportive. The effort drew opposition from full-time non-tenure faculty at the Gould School of Law, who said in spring that they were “unanimously opposed to the effort to include us.” The group cited American Bar Assn. accreditation standards that it said already provided workers with protections “reasonably similar to tenure” and encouraged law faculty to remain out of university unions. Some professors in pharmacy, engineering and education schools also publicly opposed unionizing.
Labor Watch: Harvard Grad Students End 40-Day Strike
June 3, 2026 // he Harvard Graduate Students Union announced Monday that its 40-day strike has ended “with the close of the academic year,” though the union has still not reached a bargaining agreement with the university. The strike—the longest in the union’s history—spanned the end-of-semester grading period and university commencement, which wrapped on Friday. Over the last several weeks, the university offered to expand benefits to all graduate student workers, provide dental coverage for Ph.D. students and increase its four-year raise proposal by 1 percent, the union said in a news release. These moves were the “first indication of engagement” from the university on the union’s priorities, the release said.
Op-ed: George F. Will: It’s graduation time for disappointed little Lenins
May 11, 2026 // Disgruntled Starbucks workers embraced the United Auto Workers union, which they soon despised as too tepid about rectifying all injustices everywhere. Scheiber says the UAW now represents “roughly 100,000 higher-education workers” — graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Their numbers and grievances are growing faster than those of autoworkers. Many Starbucks workers agitating for unionization were berating the company for an inadequate commitment to LGBTQ rights. Then, on Oct. 7, 2023, they fell in love with Hamas. One organizer wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with a portrait of Karl Marx. An Apple store employee, who blamed her declining mental health on “the job” and “the stress of unionizing,” became, Scheiber writes, so “desperate” she sold her two $150 tickets to a Beyoncé concert. An employee at a Baltimore-area Apple store: “I had to get rid of Hulu” (a subscription-streaming service).