Posts tagged University of Rochester
Higher ed is seeing a surge in unionizing efforts. Nazareth staffers are the latest to vote ‘Yes’
May 22, 2025 // Unionizing efforts on higher education campuses have been rising nationwide. Among graduate student-employees, union membership more than doubled between 2012 and 2024, and faculty unions have steadily increased in that same timeframe, according to the National Education Association.
U Rochester Ph.D. Student Workers Strike for an Election Without the NLRB
April 27, 2025 // University of Rochester Ph.D. student workers began striking this week to pressure the institution to agree to what they call a “fair union election.” And for the process to be fair, they say, it can’t be handled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board. “We don’t see any kind of path through the NLRB at present,” said George Elkind, a Ph.D. student on the proposed UR Graduate Labor Union’s organizing committee.
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.
Ph.D. Workers and Their University Both Backed a Union Election. Then Trump Won.
March 6, 2025 // Student workers at other private universities across the nation may also be wary of going before the Trump-era NLRB. Since the November election, petitions to form graduate or undergraduate student unions have been withdrawn at Berea College, Clark University, Dartmouth College, Kenyon College, the New School and New York University, said William A. Herbert. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, said reports of what’s happened at Rochester suggest the university “has decided to shift to a pre-litigation mode that might include an effort at overturning current NLRB precedent.”