What’s New
A report released Friday by the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies illustrates the extent of the labor-organizing boom in higher education over the past few years. While growth in faculty unionization has remained stagnant, student-worker unionizations have skyrocketed, amounting to an “extraordinary and historic” phase of student-labor organizing.
The Details
A special feature in the report, written by CUNY’s National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, at Hunter College, tallies the sharp increase in new student-worker collective-bargaining units. In 2020 that number was zero. It jumped to 12 new units in 2022, followed by 18 more units formed in the first six months of 2023. The 30 new unions founded over the 18-month period represent a total of 35,655 student workers and add up to a near 50-percent increase over the total number of student-worker bargaining units that were established in the whole period between 2013 to 2021. Among the 2022 and 2023 union victories were institutions where previous organization attempts had failed, including at Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota, and the Johns Hopkins University.
New unions included teaching and research assistants in both STEM and humanities disciplines, along with undergraduate workers like resident advisers, dining-hall workers, and library staffers. About three-quarters of new student-worker units were at private universities — a departure from historical trends, the report says.
Meanwhile, just 11 new faculty collective-bargaining units have been recognized since January 2022. While faculty unionization experienced rapid growth before the pandemic, peaking in 2015 and 2016, it has since remained relatively flat. “Whether the slower faculty unionization growth since January 2022 is a post-pandemic anomaly or symptomatic of a longer-term trend is unclear,” the report states.
The Backdrop
As support for organized labor in the U.S. reached its highest point since the 1960s and the pandemic heightened public awareness of labor-related issues, young, college-educated workers led some of the most high-profile strikes in the nation at large companies like Amazon and Starbucks, the report notes.
Graduate-student workers joined in. At the University of California system, students last year led a monthslong strike that became the largest in higher-education history — eventually agreeing to a new contract with a roughly 50-percent pay increase. Students at other institutions, such as Yale, John Hopkins, and Columbia Universities, also organized in droves, and many others followed suit. Recently, at Tufts University, resident assistants went on strike as students moved in.
The report says the recent upsurge in student-worker organizing reflects a “wider labor awakening” in young workers. While media reports about the “Great Resignation” during the pandemic painted a picture of a burnt-out workers quitting their jobs, William A. Herbert, one of the report’s authors, said the data points to an opposite phenomenon. Instead of quitting, Herbert said student-worker organizing exemplifies that younger employees are looking to stay put and improve conditions where they are.
The Stakes
Over the course of U.S. history, labor and social movements have proved to be infectious in the sense that one effort can inspire others to launch their own. That appears to be what’s happening on campuses now, and Herbert said sustained organizing on campuses could inspire other student workers to seek unionization. He added that collective action can be a “life altering” process for individuals, adding a new dimension to what some students will take away from their college experience.
“This may be a basis for a sea change away from individualism,” he said of young people’s pro-union support, “with the recognition that now, actually, it’s better for people to be working collectively toward goals than trying to accomplish goals individually.”
The increase in collective action and the new contracts it brings may also raise the standard of pay and benefits that administrators at some institutions are accustomed to budgeting for, compared with past years.
