HELU One Year Later
It’s been one year since High Education Labor United (HELU) held its founding convention and a lot has changed.
HELU elected its first steering committee, which includes two members of Local 328. It’s added a dozen new unions to the coalition, and now has two full time staff with an additional 1-2 being hired.
The national politics has changed a lot as well. Attacks on higher education have only increased under the Trump administration. We’re seeing federal dollars are being withheld from universities, threats of universities losing accreditation, and harsh crackdowns on free speech.
OHSU has not been unaffected. Threats to the NIH funding have put jobs at OHSU at risk amongst faculty, staff, and graduate students. And we will not be unaffected by future decisions. Proposed cuts to medicare and medicaid put our community’s most vulnerable at risk. Cuts to public health spending will put tremendous strain on our nation's health care systems. And the entire US labor movement faces an uncertain future with an extremely hostile administration.
Driven by our vision of a revived labor movement, HELU has been working to organize across the country. We’ve launched in-person ‘road shows’ (including one in Oregon) to work building state coalitions, resulting in the first Oregon Higher Education Summit to be held on June 7. We have worked with many of the international unions to elevate the importance of higher education and research work with the Labor 4 Higher Education coalition. Labor 4 Higher Education organized dozens of protests across the country in response to the NIH cuts, including one in Portland. HELU is now working with Federal Unionists Network (FUN), a coalition of federal workers who are also at the crosshairs of the Trump Administration, hoping to build an even stronger fighting labor movement. And on May 25th HELU launched our higher education federal policy agenda to provide an alternative vision for higher education that:
Makes higher education a right, not a commodity.
Establishes just and equitable working conditions on campus.
Rebuilds and expands our country’s research infrastructure.
Enshrines academic freedom, the right to learn, and free speech.
Ensures shared governance among communities, workers, and students.
Ends the crises of student and institutional debt.
HELU’s model is wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast. All university workers deserve good working conditions and all students deserve free (or at the very least affordable) quality education. This is the vision we are fighting for.
If you want to keep up with HELU, please sign up to receive emails here. And if you are a member of Local 328 and want to get more involved with building a national movement please contact TJ (tj@higheredlaborunited.org) or Evan (it@local328.org). All this work is driven by union members across the country, getting involved in HELU committees, showing up to events, and promoting our events. Whether your job is directly affected by what’s happening, you have a child attending college, or you believe that higher education is a public good worth defending, you have a place in HELU.