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.
The Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) is a labor union representing graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University (NYU).
The Federation of Hospital And University Employees is a coalition of labor unions in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, which represents thousands of workers at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital. The federation currently includes recognized unions UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35, which represent university food service, maintenance, and custodial workers, and clerical and technical workers, respectively. UNITE HERE has also, for the last fifteen years, supported the organizing efforts of graduate student teachers and researchers in the Graduate Employees and Students Organization. Finally, the Federation also includes the 150 dietary workers at Yale New Haven Hospital who are members of Local 1199NE of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Since 1998, this union has conducted an organizing campaign of about 1,800 other blue-collar service workers at the hospital. On March 22, 2006, the union and hospital agreed to an agreement governing the conduct of both parties in a neutral election process by which hospital employees will be able to vote on whether to unionize.
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 Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902 is a Canadian labour union local representing sessional lecturers, postdoctoral researchers and teaching assistants (TAs) at the University of Toronto, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, the University of St. Michael's College and New College in the University of Toronto.
The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is a non-profit association of academics, educators, students, and labor movement and other activists that promotes research into and publication of materials on the history of the labor movement in North and South America. Its current president is James Gregory, professor of history at University of Washington.
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).
Robert Thompson King is an American lawyer and labor union activist and leader. He was elected President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on June 15, 2010. His term of office ended in June 2014, and King announced his retirement, being succeeded by Dennis Williams as head of the UAW.
UAW Local 5810 is the labor union representing postdoctoral researchers and academic researchers at the University of California. It is an affiliate of the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) or AFL–CIO. UAW Local 5810 was chartered in 2008. The stand-alone postdoctoral scholar contract and academic researcher contract negotiated between UC and UAW are notable for being the first of their kind in the United States, respectively.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) is a graduate student union at the University of Oregon (UO) established in 1976 to represent graduate student workers, and it is one of the oldest graduate student unions in the United States. Developed out of the earlier Graduate Student Employees Association, the UO administration objected to the establishment of the union, citing that graduate workers were "not public employees", but were rather "primarily students receiving a form of financial aid similar to stipends or scholarships." The Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) ruled in favor of the graduate students and supported their right to organize. The GTFF began organizing its first contract in April 1977 with the University of Oregon administration. The negotiations reached an impasse in 1978, and it was not until after two strike votes that an agreement was reached. In 1989, the GTFF secured subsidies for health insurance, which was expanded in 1993 to be fully employer-paid, one of the first such programs offered to graduate teachers in the United States.
Eric Mann is a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer whose career spans more than 50 years. He has worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther Party, the United Automobile Workers and the New Directions Movement. He was also active as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He is also founder of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition, Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what it called “transit racism”, resulting in a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v. MTA.
Postdoctoral researcher unionization is the formation of labor unions by postdoctoral researchers (postdocs). It has been driven by increasing competition for scarce tenure-track faculty positions, leading to more people residing in postdoctoral positions for a longer time. Unions often challenge the low pay, minimal benefits, and lack of job security that are typical of postdoctoral positions. Unionizing is however sometimes seen as creating a culture clash of tension between postdocs and their academic advisors, and some question the suitability of a union for a temporary position. Some universities seek to avoid pushes for unionization by proactively addressing the concerns of postdoctoral researchers.
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.
Marcellette ("Marci") Gaillard-Gay Williams is an American retired academic administrator who served as interim chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst from July 2001 until July 2002. She was the university's eighth chancellor and the first woman to serve in the position.
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.
