Academic Labor Power

• Higher Ed Labor United (HELU): "We envision a future in which higher education is treated and funded as a social good and universal right." Our chapter is a proud member of HELU, a coalition of over 550,000 higher ed workers, including student workers, postdocs, staff, and adjunct, contingent, and tenured faculty, united for workplace rights, dignified wages, and racial, gender, and environmental justice. Members are from AAUP, AFSCME, AFT, CWA, NEA, SEIU, the Teamsters, UAW, and UE. Our AAUP chapter has endorsed HELU's vision. Learn about organizing with our resources here.

• Organizing for Power: International labor organization launched in 2019, with tens of thousands of members from 110 countries around the planet. Gain organizing skills through their training series with Jane McAlevey, or ask an AAUP or Penn State faculty member who has taken the training to share strategies for supermajority wins.

Collective bargaining at big universities

Organizing unions is complicated at large universities with multiple campuses. Here is some information to show a number of different ways that academic labor organizations have coalesced and affiliated with union partners. California State University, U of California, and Rutgers are universities that have organized one or more unions across multiple campuses of comparable size to the Penn State University system.

• California Faculty Association (CFA) at California State University:

  • represents “29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches who teach and provide services to the California State University system’s 485,000.“

  • affililated with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1983 and AAUP.

• UCnet at University of California: 15 unions representing 115,000+ employees across the UC system.

• Rutgers One at Rutgers University: represents 10,000 employees after merging three academic labor unions in March 2022

  • Rutgers AAUP-AFT: full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and counselors

  • Rutgers PTLFC-AAUP-AFT: Part-Time Lecturers

  • AAUP-BHSNJ: Biomedical and Health Sciences faculty

• Union of Pitt Faculty at University of Pittsburgh: affiliated with United Steelworkers (USW), represents ~3300 faculty + 800 staff across 6 units.

• Unions at University of Michigan: several representing employees across 3 campuses

  • full list

  • American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1583 represents 2,600 university employees at Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine

  • LEO (AFT Local 6244): first organized in 2001, represents all non-tenure track faculty at the three U. Michigan campuses

Academic Labor Standards

The AAUP Redbook

• AAUP Standards for Nonreappointment & Full-Time Renewable Term Appointments

• AAUP “The Role of Faculty in Conditions of Financial Exigency” (2015)

Additional standards:

• • Middle States Standards for Accreditation and Requirements of Affiliation

    1. Standard 1: Mission and Goals

    2. Standard 2: Ethics and Integrity