The United Auto Workers (UAW), fully named International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States and southern Ontario, Canada. It was founded as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and grew rapidly from 1936 to the 1950s. The union played a major role in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party under the leadership of Walter Reuther. It was known for gaining high wages and pensions for automotive manufacturing workers, but it was unable to unionize auto plants built by foreign-based car makers in the South after the 1970s, and it went into a steady decline in membership; reasons for this included increased automation, decreased use of labor, mismanagement, movements of manufacturing, and increased globalization. After a successful strike at the Big Three in 2023, the union organized its first foreign plant (VW) in 2024.
William Julian Usery Jr. was an American labor union activist and government appointee who served as United States secretary of labor in the Ford administration.
Local 33–UNITE HERE, formerly the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, is a union of graduate student teachers and researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Local 33 is affiliated with the international union UNITE HERE, which also represents Yale University's service, maintenance, clerical, and technical workers. After more than three decades of organizing, Yale graduate workers submitted over 3,000 signed union authorization cards to the Hartford, Connecticut, office of the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, representing the greatest number of graduate workers who have ever supported unionizing. On January 9, 2023, Yale graduate workers won their union, with 1,860 members voting in favor and 179 voting against, a 10.4 to 1 ratio in favor of unionization. The proposed worker bargaining unit of about 4,000 graduate and professional school workers was the second largest election filing in the country in 2022.
The Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) is a labor union representing graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University (NYU).
The Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA) is a graduate employee union that is located at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
Graduate student employee unionization, or academic student employee unionization, refers to labor unions that represent students who are employed by their college or university to teach classes, conduct research and perform clerical duties. As of 2014, there were at least 33 US graduate employee unions, 18 unrecognized unions in the United States, and 23 graduate employee unions in Canada. By 2019, it is estimated that there were 83,050 unionized student employees in certified bargaining units in the United States. As of 2023, there were at least 156 US graduate student employee unions and 23 graduate student employee unions in Canada.
The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) is a labor union in Pennsylvania that represents about 8,300 nurses and allied health professionals.
The Graduate Employees' Organization at UIUC (GEO) is a labor union created to defend and extend the bargaining and employment rights of Graduate Employees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP) is a group of graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania that is trying to become recognized as a union. The group, first formed in the spring of 2001, and affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In 2004, according to exit polling by The Daily Pennsylvanian, the limited set of University of Pennsylvania graduate student employees included in the bargaining unit voted for unionization; however, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), before the votes were counted, decided that graduate students in private universities are not employees, while graduate students in public universities may be employees. The group began to re-form in 2016, and re-affiliated with AFT in October 2016. On March 2, 2017 the group once again decided to go public with their unionization campaign. The group has not been recognized by the University as a union for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) is a graduate student employee union formed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1966. It is credited as the first graduate student labor union. Following voluntary recognition by the university as the teaching assistants' bargaining agent in 1969, negotiations resulted in a 1970 strike, which secured "bread-and-butter" gains such as job security alongside grievance procedures. Their major unmet demand from their strike—the inclusion of teaching assistants and students in the course planning process—went unfulfilled. The TAA struck again in 1980 and lost its union recognition until 1986. The union's protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol building began the 2011 Wisconsin protests.
Members-only unionism, also known as minority unionism, is a model for trade unions in which local unions represent and organize workers who voluntarily join rather than the entire workforce of a place of employment. In such a model, a union election is not held by the entire workforce to determine whether a majority wishes for the workforce to be represented by a local branch of a national union, but a union can nonetheless exist to support members who pay dues.
The Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU), officially known as Harvard Graduate Students Union United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW), is a labor union representing graduate students, teaching assistants, and other student employees at Harvard University. The bargaining unit comprises about 5,000 student employees, including graduate students working as research assistants and teaching fellows as well as several hundred undergraduate students holding teaching positions. Contract negotiations with the university are scheduled to begin in Fall 2018. HGSU is affiliated with the United Auto Workers labor union, whose 400,000 members include 45,000 graduate students and 30,000 academic workers.
The 2020 Santa Cruz graduate students' strike was a wildcat strike launched against the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).
The 2021–2022 Columbia University strike was a labor strike involving graduate student workers at Columbia University in New York City. The strike began on March 15, 2021, and ended on May 13, 2021. However, additional strike action commenced on November 3 and lasted until January 7, 2022, when a tentative agreement with the university was reached. The strike was organized by the Graduate Workers of Columbia–United Auto Workers Local 2110 (SWC–UAW), a labor union representing student workers at the university. The goals of the strike were an increase in wages, increased healthcare and childcare coverage, and third-party arbitration in cases of discrimination and sexual harassment.
The 1979 Boston University strike was a labor strike involving employees at Boston University, a private university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The strike, involving faculty members, clerical workers, and librarians, began on April 5 and was fully ended by April 23.
Tesla, Inc. is an American electric car manufacturer which as of January 2024 employs over 140,000 workers across its global operations, almost none of whom are unionized. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has commented negatively on trade unions in relation to Tesla. Despite allegations of high injury rates, long hours, and below-industry pay, efforts to unionize the workforce have been largely unsuccessful. As of February 2024, there are active labor disputes with Tesla in the United States, Germany and Sweden.
Student Researchers United-UAW (SRU-UAW) was a union representing student researchers at the University of California (UC). It was part of the United Auto Workers. The union was composed of more than 17,000 people who work across 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They were the largest 2021 addition to the UAW, accounting for 0.1% of union members in the US, and, according to organizers, were "the largest academic student employee union in US history." The union later joined UAW 2865 and ceased to be an independent entity.
The 2022 University of California academic workers' strike was a labor strike at all campuses of the University of California (UC) system, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. On November 14, some 48,000 academic workers went on strike for better pay and benefits. Led by the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union, it was the largest strike in the United States in 2022; union organizers describe it as the largest strike in all of U.S. higher education.
The 2023 Temple University strike was a labor dispute between the Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA), a graduate student employee union that represented roughly 750 graduate student employees at Temple University, and the university administration, led by President Jason Wingard. The strike began on January 31, 2023, and lasted until March 13, when union members voted to ratify a tentative agreement brokered between the negotiators for both parties.
The 2024 Boston University strike is an ongoing labor strike in Boston, Massachusetts by graduate student and residential life workers at Boston University. The strike began on March 25, 2024, and was organized by the Boston University Graduate Workers Union (BUGWU) labor union, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union Local 509. It is the longest strike the university has experienced since a 1979 strike which lasted two weeks and four days. A second concurrent strike by the Boston University Residence Life Union labor union, also affiliated with SEIU 509, ran for four days starting on April 12, 2024.
