In These Times Honors Academic Workers
For its vitality and its protection of members against repression, the movement to organize higher education received an Honorable Mention in the Labor Organizer of the Year awards.
Fatima Jalloh
This article is part of the In These Times Labor Organizer of the Year series. The award honors emerging leaders building worker power across the country. Academic workers received one of two honorable mentions in 2025. Read about the winners here.
The labor movement in higher education far predates Trump’s attacks. The past decade has seen professors, adjuncts and grad students organizing with more than a dozen unions, including the AAUP, AFSCME, AFT, SEIU, CWA, NEA, UE, the Teamsters and more.
According to a 2024 report from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, unionization rates among grad students leapt 133% since 2012 and faculty unions grew 7.5%, with strong new organizing among adjuncts and contingent faculty.
And that’s before the huge wins of 2024: Organizing by UE culminated in six first contracts covering 18,000 academic workers. Another 15,000 higher education workers in six units secured their first UAW contracts in 2024. At the University of Minnesota, hard-won reforms allowed access to unionization for more than 23,000 workers and opened the door for grad students to win their first collective bargaining agreement.
In 2024, according to the National Center’s latest findings:
- 53,500 workers unionized in 2024
- 27 new faculty unions
- 22 new grad student and postdoc unions
- 530% increase in undergrads unionized
These unions have also stood up against violent repression. United Auto Workers Local 4811 reported the University of California used mace, flashbang grenades and rubber bullets against students speaking out against the genocide in Palestine, while also allowing counter-protesters to “physically assault protesters en masse.” In response, the union mobilized a two-week strike involving thousands of campus workers, which ended after a judicial injunction was issued.
The fight goes on. A wave of expulsions, suspensions and degree revocations — spurred by the Trump administration — has impacted scholars around the country, including the president of Columbia’s grad student union. With federal funding and freedom of speech on the line in 2025, higher education unions are standing against not only their employers but an increasingly fascist federal government.
Fatima Jalloh (they/them) is a poet and journalist from Jacksonville, Florida, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. With an education in Journalism, Black Studies, and Poetry from Northwestern University, they work as an editorial intern for In These Times alongside their own personal writing projects.
