Organizing for the Common Good: Contributions of Academic Unions

After decades of decline, unionization has increased across the U.S. Public opinion polling demonstrates strong support for unions, and workers at both large and small employers are fighting to unionize. This includes academic institutions, as recent unionization votes, contract disputes and even strikes demonstrate a growing movement of faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. Union organizing on campus is a response to multiple factors, including: the decline of tenure and increase in contingent or disposable labor, trends away from shared governance between faculty and administration, budget models requiring individual units to cover expenses and generate profits for central administration, continued reliance on low-paid graduate and undergraduate labor for teaching and research, and, for staff, low pay, arbitrary disciplinary processes, and growing workloads.

Importantly, unionization on campus has tremendous potential for impact beyond traditional issues such as wages, hours, and conditions of employment. As universities continue to expand their footprint and impact on communities, as endowments grow and are invested broadly, as tuitions rise and students continue to incur debt and struggle to pay for basic needs, as emphasis on faculty funding their salary and securing in-directs grows, and as state support for higher education continues to come up short, unionization presents an opportunity to organize for the common good. This roundtable features five academics who have been involved in campus unionization and will speak to the campus benefits as well as broader community impacts of academic organizing.

Faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the bargaining team for the recently-formed Union of Pitt Faculty that includes 3500 members with more than 10,000 staff and graduate students expecting unionization votes in coming months.

Faculty member who is Vice President of the faculty union at Wayne State University, where in their current bargaining effort they seek to improve working conditions for their own members and to help address student housing issues in Detroit.

Faculty member at Rutgers University where numerous unions recently struck for and won raises, increased job security, and better benefits. As the Chair of the New Brunswick Faculty Council and representative to the Senate Executive Committee, this faculty member will speak to the relationship between faculty governance and unionization.

Doctoral student at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and co-president of the graduate student union who helped lead efforts to address racism and sexism in tandem with fighting for traditional improvements in working conditions through graduate student organizing.

Faculty member at California State University Long Beach. Along with many social work students, she participated in a recent system-wide strike for better pay, parental leave, and mental health supports for students.

Panelists will discuss the potential of organizing on campuses to improve working conditions and to bargain and advocate for the common good. Panelists will highlight challenges faced by and within unionization efforts, ways to address these challenges, and the role of social work practice and research in these efforts.