First-Ever Bargaining Compact Unites Higher Ed Unions Across Northeastern US

When East Coast members of Higher Education Labor United (HELU) got together in January, they set their sights on developing a national plan to improve working conditions for university and college faculty and staff, enhance learning conditions for students, and build lasting partnerships with local communities to promote the common good.

Together, they drafted a document called the Amherst Compact. While it is largely aspirational, it commits HELU to working “to coordinate bargaining priorities that raise the floor for workers of all job categories across the most densely-unionized region of the U.S.,” the Northeast.

Moreover, the agreement pledges solidarity across job titles, even on campuses where multiple unions represent workers in different employment categories — buildings and grounds; clerical; custodial; food service; research; security; or teaching — and regardless of whether the workers are employed by university hospitals or degree-granting bodies.

As written, the compact covers nine states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont — and includes public, private, and post-high school technical training programs.

Marissa Johnson Valenzuela, an English professor and union leader at the Community College of Philadelphia, recently spoke to Truthout about the Amherst Compact, labor organizing, and building community support for higher education.

The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity.

Eleanor J. Bader: The Amherst Compact is conceptually exciting, but can you explain the mechanics of how it might work given the fact that higher education workers often belong to different unions and are covered by contracts that expire at different times?

Marissa Johnson Valenzuela: This is something HELU continues to think through, but the compact represents a way for us to define what we need as workers. We also know that coordination between campuses and between different unions will not happen without agency from workers. We have to think beyond what seems possible, since ‘divide and conquer’ has worked to benefit college boards and administrators.

Asserting that we need to be inclusive, that all staff matter, is extremely important. But it also means that we have to educate our members. For example, many tenured faculty do not fully appreciate the value of contingent staff — adjuncts — or understand the extent of their exploitation. We have to explain it. This means that we have to step back and listen to each other so that we can grasp what people have experienced. We have to hear the adjunct explain that her life is precarious despite her degrees. And she may also be $100,000 in debt. We need to have lots of open-ended conversations to discuss levels of economic and social privilege and determine how these things play out on campus. It’s the only way we can begin to overcome decades of division based on race, gender, and class.

“The compact … presents a new standard in which we insist on more. It rejects the union model that works to simply maintain what we already have. Maintaining the status quo does not protect us.”

The compact does one other thing: It challenges staid union leaders to step it up and put a bold vision forward. We know that those with a bold vision get farther. The compact, as a statement, presents a new standard in which we insist on more. It rejects the union model that works to simply maintain what we already have. Maintaining the status quo does not protect us. The compact gives workers a way to play offense.

We know that we can’t expect to make progress overnight, but talking openly is essential to winning. Bridging divisions based on job titles is also the right thing to do.

Higher education is one of the areas where union membership has grown significantly over the past decade. Can HELU use the compact to build on this momentum?

HELU was founded in 2021 to create a unified vision about benefit and wage guarantees that are long overdue in higher ed and give us a forum to articulate what workers and students need. The group also wants to push our unions to demand more. We have seen that when one union is willing to take scraps, others tend to follow suit. HELU wants to shift what is acceptable.

Working at a college or university used to be a good job, but the positions have gotten shittier and shittier over the past few decades. Prior to the 1970s, 75 percent of faculty were tenured or tenure-track. Now it’s 25 percent. Faculty also used to share governance with administrators, but that day is over. Once faculty and staff acknowledge this tangible decline — in wages, benefits, and respect — they are usually receptive to organizing. This has meant that those in more elite positions, people who at one time did not see themselves as workers, have pivoted. While there are still divisions, most faculty have learned that showing up for themselves and for other workers — especially the lowest-wage employees on campus — makes all of us stronger.

How does HELU ensure that information is shared between campuses? How does it promote widescale strategizing and tactical debate and discussion?

HELU acts like a central office and constantly sends out emails to promote solidarity and share information. The website and our social media feeds also do this, and we have general membership meetings once a quarter along with frequent Zoom events and other gatherings. Numerous working groups meet every week or two. Right now, we’re making a concerted push to bring more community college and staff unions into HELU. Finally, the Northeast activists who met in Amherst, Massachusetts, in January and drafted the compact are hoping to have additional regional gatherings.

In 1980, the decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University made it possible for private colleges and universities to deem full-time faculty “managerial employees” and deny them the protection of collective bargaining. Similarly, in 2020, the NLRB ruled that it has no jurisdiction over faculty at religious higher ed institutions. Nonetheless, the compact covers all colleges and universities, public and private. How is HELU navigating this?

The compact is a way to bring private colleges into the conversation about the goals and principles that delineate what all higher ed staff and faculty should have. One of the most important things that HELU does is share contract language so that unions do not need to reinvent the wheel in negotiations. Although the landscape at private colleges is different than the landscape at public programs, unions in both types of institutions can support each other and demonstrate solidarity.

Are other kinds of strategic planning and information sharing promoted through HELU and/or the compact?

Different unions have different starting points when it comes to organizing. We share strategies and tactics that union leaders and rank-and-file members have used to win, to teach one another how successful campaigns were waged. This is a way for HELU to push unions from a service model into an organizing model and elevate successful efforts to win wage increases and other benefits. HELU also provides sample arguments — so, for example, when management claims that if staff receive wage increases it will mean tuition hikes that will hurt students, members know how to respond to show that this claim is bogus. We know that what hurts students is high faculty turnover when teachers quit because they can’t afford to stay in their jobs. Conversations about this are incredibly important.

I want to share another anecdote, as well. There is a small union, with only about 100 members, at another Pennsylvania college. A woman I know agreed to be the union president because no one else wanted the position. She told me she was overwhelmed about what she was supposed to do and frustrated because she did not only want to fight to protect the minimal protections that had already been won. Joining HELU changed this for her and her colleagues. Once her local connected to HELU, they had access to resources and advice to help strengthen their union and make the work ahead less daunting. They now had people to support them and a network to tap into to help them build the union on their campus. My friend benefited from being able to throw a problem to the group and see how it might be solved.

The compact also includes working for the common good in our communities. How will HELU use the compact to promote this?

HELU members see ourselves as changing the narrative. When we don’t value public education as a public good, neither community residents nor workers are served. Education programs make communities safer. They give people networks of support.

At the same time, we have to see what community members care about. We have to have conversations with community partners.

At the Community College of Philadelphia, we developed a program to give enrolled students transit passes after students told us that getting to and from campus was a big issue. As staff, we needed to talk with students in order to learn this. More generally, colleges need to listen to the community, both on and off campus, and figure out ways to help them meet their most pressing unmet needs.

Does HELU promote support for trade unions among students?

Yes. Conversations with students about unions need to happen repeatedly. We can’t assume that students know what a union is and how joining one can benefit them. We also need to teach students union history to underscore that union jobs are likely going to be better than non-union positions. We need to teach them that unions fight for worker dignity as well as bread-and-butter benefits. Furthermore, we have to explain that unions work for real people who deserve more than they’ll get if they remain unorganized.

HELU is using the compact as a template, a new standard, to expand the imagination of college and university staff and students about what’s possible. We have to imagine something better.