Colleges and universities employ nearly 4 million people across the United States. Unionization in the higher education sector is gaining speed, fueled by a growing awareness of labor rights and a desire for fairer working conditions, including among undergraduate workers.
Since 2012, the number of union-represented faculty has risen 7.2%, and graduate worker representation has risen a whopping 133%. The call for unionization is resonating across colleges and universities nationwide, empowering employees as it goes.
Here at Northeastern University, dining hall workers employed by Chartwells Dining Services secured a historic contract victory at the end of 2022 with UNITE HERE. Their contract, signed September 6, will result in the tripling of workers’ pay over the next 14 years, quadrupled pension plan contributions, and guaranteed sick day coverage. In a win for graduate workers, the Graduate Employees of Northeastern University - United Auto Workers (GENU-UAW) overwhelmingly won a union representation election and was certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in September 2023. It is currently bargaining towards its first contract, with the last negotiating session held in September 2024. Massachusetts has the second highest cost of living in the United States, so these two union victories are crucial for many families.
Recently, the labor union fire has spread in the greater Boston area to the undergraduate level, too, helping form a historic wave of younger employees organizing unions. Resident assistants, or RAs, are at the forefront of this movement, demanding better pay, job security, hiring transparency, and mutual respect from their employers.
Earlier this year, RAs at Emerson College in downtown Boston voted 67-0 to be represented by a union. RAs at Emerson were directly inspired by the seven-month-long union organizing effort and RA strike at Tufts University in September 2023. This strike ended with a 95-4 vote in favor of forming a union with Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153.
Boston University is the latest on the list of universities whose RAs have unionized. RAs joined the ranks of union membership in September. The three-year collective bargaining agreement between the university and its Residence Life Union followed a week-long strike. The standout provision in this contract provides a $1,700 per semester stipend to RAs, which exceeds Emerson’s $1,600 and Tufts’ $1,425.
Many argue that RAs’ free housing is insufficient compensation for their unique work situation of constantly being on-call in a hybrid living and working space. RAs are known for their crucial role in the residential life of higher education institutions as they organize social events, act as community advisors, keep residents safe from harmful situations, and even act as first responders for health and safety situations in many cases.
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Wearing all these hats means that RAs are juggling a nearly full-time job on top of being full-time students in most cases. But the NLRB didn’t open the door for RAs at private colleges to unionize until a 2016 ruling, decades after RAs at some public institutions gained access to the same right to collective action under state laws. On August 23, 2016, the NLRB issued a decision that graduate and undergraduate student teaching and research assistants at private universities are “employees” protected by the National Labor Relations Act. The recognition of student workers as employees allows them to select a bargaining representative, and under the Act, the university must deal exclusively with that labor organization with respect to all mandatory subjects of bargaining, like wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions.
Fair wages are not the only victories these unions have secured for their members; the working conditions have vastly improved, too. At Boston University, a new collective bargaining agreement provides RAs 一 who are required by the university to maintain a 2.70 cumulative GPA 一 a grace period to raise their grades rather than immediately firing them from their role.
At Tufts, those protections have gone a step further, since RAs are no longer considered at-will employees of the university. They may be fired from their positions only when there is just cause. Just cause is the termination of employment due to misconduct that either violates the employment contract, breaches the trust of a working relationship, or contradicts the employee’s obligation to their employer. The contract also imposes a cap of 50 residents assigned to each RA, 30 of which can be first-year students, which limits RAs’ workload to a more reasonable level.
RAs at four-year colleges and universities find themselves in a unique situation when it comes to bargaining momentum. Unfortunately, due to short student terms, and even shorter RA terms, constant turnover makes it quite difficult for student employees to compel the university toward meaningful action. Unless RAs have a strong and consistent union to fight for them, colleges are not always willing to listen or agree to create lasting change in response to student interests.
RAs at Northeastern University have similar concerns that their voices are going unheard. While there is a RA unionization movement building on campus, the undergraduate students in the Northeastern Resident Assistant Cooperative, or NRAC, have not yet been able to secure union representation on the Boston campus. In 2022, 145 people signed a petition in support of RAs’ demands for better working conditions. According to NRAC, the senior leadership of the Residential Life department at Northeastern has not addressed those demands.
Unions on college campuses help to ensure a healthy and positive working environment for employees such as RAs, dining hall workers, and grad students to work, learn, and live. By advocating for better pay, increased job security, and transparency from employers, unions help employees achieve stability and equity. As higher education and university workforces continue to evolve, the role of unions remains vital in advocating for the needs of younger generations as they embrace the spirit of solidarity and collective action to usher in positive change.
This article is part of Power at Work’s Students & Solidarity Project. To read more about the history and impact of unions, as well as how to get involved, please visit Power at Work’s homepage.
