Workers are on the move across America. Strikes rose by an astounding 50 percent between 2021 and 2022, and the pace of organization was equally impressive, with new fields of organizing opening in the service sector, the art world, and high tech. Of special interest in a local economy dominated by the University of Illinois and the labor markets associated with the school is the escalating upsurge in graduate employee militancy. Although graduate employees at UIUC have been unionized since 2000, the extension of graduate employee unionization to other higher education institutions strengthens the bargaining power of all such collective efforts. A higher wage and benefits floor becomes generalized, and each unionization victory inspires organizing efforts elsewhere.

Graduate employee unionization also provides institutional vehicles to counter sources of the ongoing crisis in higher education, such as public disinvestment, the student debt crisis and inequities in access, as well as right-wing attempts to restrict teaching about systemic oppression, racism, and discrimination against all forms of gender non-conformity. As the wages and working conditions (e.g., office space and sufficient supplies) of graduate employees improve, moreover, it is of the uppermost importance that the quality of the educational experience they can offer their students goes up. Continue reading →

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