- Mission
- People
- Staff Directory
- Advisory Board
- Faculty Committees
- Faculty Associates
- Student Advisory Board
- Human Rights Program
- HRP Annual Reports
- Curriculum and Courses
- Fall 2024 Courses — Human Rights Program
- Fall 2023 Human Rights Courses
- Student Guide to HR 250
- Internship Agreement Form
- Guidelines for HR 250 Final Reflection Paper
- Past Events
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Curriculum and Courses
- Fall 2024 Courses — Public Policy Program
- Spring 2024 Courses — Public Policy Program
- Fall 2023 Courses — Public Policy Program
- Past Events
- Videos
- Frank Friday Sign-Up
- Upcoming LGBTQ Policy Center Events
- Past LGBTQ Policy Center Programs
- Student Activities
- Grove Application
- 2023 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2023 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- 2022 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2022 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- 2021 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2021 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- 2020 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2020 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- 2019 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2019 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- 2018 Grove Fellowship Leaders
- 2018 Grove Fellowship Cohorts
- SDR Library Weekly Calendar
- Faculty Associates
- Directory of Faculty Associates
- The Discriminatory Impact of COVID-19: The Pandemic’s Role in Highlighting Entrenched Racial Inequalities in the US
- Reconsidering the Supreme Court in Partisan America
- Universal Basic Income
- New and Renewed Visions of Environmental Justice
- The First 100 Days of the Trump Presidency: What to Expect
- Unpacking the Tensions Between Minority Communities and Law Enforcement in the United States
- The Complex Realities of the ‘Brexit’ Vote
- Issues of Equity and Justice in Education Policy
- Advancing Policy to Support Workers with Disabilities
- Roosevelt House Faculty Forum Terms of Service
- Upcoming Public Programs
- Human Rights Program Events
- Public Policy Program Events
- LGBTQ Policy Center Events
- Policies of Pride: Stonewall at 50
- Climate Injustice: Are There Solutions?
- Politics, Policy, and the Arts
- The Creation of Blue and Red America (2014)
- Changing New York: A Roosevelt House Policy Forum (2013)
- Election 2012: The Road to November
- Featured Videos
- Photos
- Livestream
- YouTube
- Social Media
- Nomination Guidelines
- Nomination Form
- The Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health
- The Joan H. Tisch Public Health Forum
- History
- The Eleanor Project
- Roosevelt House: Saving a National Treasure for a New Generation, 1943–2023
- One Person Crying: Women and War — Photographs by Marissa Roth
- New Deal 90 — The Civilian Conservation Corps: March 31, 1933
- Much More Than a Holiday: The Roosevelts and a St. Patrick’s Day Wedding, March 17, 1905
- Combating an Epidemic: President Roosevelt’s Birthday Celebrations on January 30
- December 7, 2021: 80 Years Since the Attack on Pearl Harbor
- The Death of President Roosevelt, April 12, 1945
- The Roosevelts and Thanksgiving
- “A Lens on FDR’s New Deal:” Photographs by Arthur Rothstein, 1935-1945
- Reimagining the Four Freedoms
- The New Deal in New York City, 1933—1943
- “Affectionately, F.D.R.” Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Long-Lost Letters to Daisy Suckley
- “A Forward-Looking Place”: Roosevelt House at 75 Years
- “My Most Important Task” Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- World War 1 and the Roosevelts: Franklin and Eleanor, Family and Friends
- Highlights From the Collection: Roosevelt Memorabilia
- Women Take the Lead: From Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Eleanor Roosevelt, Suffrage to Human Rights
- See How They Ran! FDR & His Opponents: Treasures from the New York Historical Society
New Study Reveals Upsurge in Unionization and Strikes in Higher Education
As Figure 1a shows, the overall level of unionization in both the City and State has been roughly double the national rate over the past two decades. But recently, union density has fallen more in New York City and New York State than in the United States as a whole. In the mid-2010s, both the City and State rates steadily hovered around 24 percent, but they began to fall after 2017. By 2022–23, only 17.7 percent of all wage and salary workers residing in the five boroughs of New York City, and 20.2 percent of those in the state, were union members.
This year’s report includes a special feature guest authored by CUNY’s National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, It analyzes the recent uptick in organizing and strikes among student-workers and faculty in higher education since January 2022.
U.S. labor unions have represented academic employees for more than half a century, primarily at public four-year higher education institutions and community colleges. Over the past decade, however, unionization in higher education has increased significantly, especially among contingent faculty and graduate student-workers at private colleges and universities.
“Labor activism has increased in the past few years among highly educated young workers, frustrated by poor pay and precarious employment, said report co-author Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and the CUNY Graduate Center. “Museum workers, journalists, nonprofit staff, medical interns and residents, as well as graduate student workers in colleges and universities have turned to unions to improve their situations.”
“Organizing among college and university faculty, graduate assistants and other student workers is not new, but it has accelerated since the Great Recession, and further accelerated following the pandemic,” William A. Herbert, Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, and the National Center’s Executive Director notes. “Since January 2022, a significant upsurge has taken shape, primarily among student workers.” This new wave of campus labor activism, although larger in scale than before, builds on more than five decades of growth in higher education unionism.
Recent union campaigns by graduate and undergraduate student workers have seen significant success, thanks to such factors as:
- Growing support for unions among young adults, with 77 percent approving of organized labor according to a recent Gallup poll.
- Increased attention to campus working conditions and labor issues in general during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Increased activity by traditional unions like the UAW, UE, and SEIU organizing workers in higher education.
As Figure B1 shows, during 2022 and the first half of 2023, unions won 30 new student-worker collective bargaining units, representing a total of 35,655 workers. Most of these involved graduate student workers, who make up 93 percent (33,314) of all student-workers organized in this period.
In 2022-2023, nearly three-quarters of the new graduate assistant units and all of the undergraduate bargaining units were formed at private colleges and universities. Examples include Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota, and Johns Hopkins University. This is in stark contrast to the trend prior to 2016, where nearly all of units consisted of graduate student employees at public institutions. The 2022-2023 growth in student-worker union organizing overshadows activity among faculty, for whom unionization growth was slower than in the pre-pandemic period, as Figure B3 shows.
Between 2013 and 2021, 126 faculty collective bargaining units won recognition, involving a total of 42,466 faculty. Over half (55%) of these new faculty bargaining units were at private (including both for- and non-profit) institutions. By contrast, only 11 new faculty units have been recognized since January 2022, 10 of which included non-tenure-track faculty.
Whether the slower faculty unionization growth since January 2022 is a post-pandemic anomaly or part of a longer-term trend is unclear. Several new faculty organizing campaigns are currently underway, mostly among contingent faculty at private institutions. Future growth at public institutions may occur as new legislation expands public-sector collective bargaining rights.
Higher Education Strike Activity
Since January 2022, there have been 20 strikes in higher education involving student workers, faculty, and post-doctoral scholars as Figure B4 shows. These 20 strikes account for 32 percent ofall higher education strikes since 2013. In 2023 alone, there were 10 strikes, with six of them involving faculty and post-doctoral units, and five involving student workers.
While college and university strikes are not new, the growth in strike activity in higher education is unprecedented within recent memory. There were only four student-worker strikes between 2013 and 2017. However, the tide began to shift in 2018, with a continuous rise in strikes in the years since. This is part of a larger increase in labor organizing and strikes, much of it among younger, college-educated workers. However, this recent uptick in activity has not been large enough to reverse the long-term overall decline in union density in the United States.
About the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
About the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College
