Unionization has been surging in higher education, according to a new comprehensive report that reveals a133% increase among graduate student employees in the US since 2012.
An estimated 38% of graduate student employees are now unionized, with more than 150,000 workers in 81 bargaining units as of January 2024.
The extraordinary increase was highlighted by the first comprehensive study on unionization in higher education since 2012, by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College.
“The growth of non-tenure track faculty, postdocs, academic researchers, graduate and undergraduate students shows how unionization is becoming a tactic of choice for change,” said Adrianna Kezar, professor and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.
Unionized faculty members in higher education also grew by 7.5%, with a total of 402,217 unionized faculty members at over 600 institutions across 30 states and Washington DC. California, New York and New Jersey have the highest number of unionized faculty members.
In 2020, the first postdoctoral scholar union was formed at a private university, Columbia University. According to the report, as of this year, there are 10 bargaining units of exclusively postdoctoral scholars, with a total of 11,471 employees and two academic research units with a total of 6,132 employees in the US.
In 2016, the first undergraduate student employee union in the US was formed at Grinnell College in Iowa. There are currently 19 exclusive undergraduate student employee units, with 3,515 represented employees.
The report comes as union density in the US has rapidly declined in recent decades, from 20.1% of US workers in 1983 to 10% in 2023. Labor advocates have pointed to obstacles to union organizing efforts and outdated US labor laws as driving factors for the decline, which comes despite majority support among Americans for labor unions, according to polling.
