United Campus Workers (UCW)
- Updated November 12, 2024
By Eric Dirnbach
United Campus Workers (UCW) is a multi-state union that focuses on organizing public-sector higher-education workers, largely in states where they have no legal collective bargaining rights. They are affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Started in Tennessee in the 2000s, UCW spread in recent years to other states in the southeast U.S. and then elsewhere. It now has a presence in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. It is a “wall-to-wall” union, open to all workers at public higher-education institutions. It includes all job categories, from instruction, to research, academic support, service, maintenance, clerical, and technical workers.
UCW organizers described the unique unity among all campus workers in their union in an article in The Forge:
“One of the strengths of UCW’s model is that we bring members together across job categories and institutions to make demands in a unified voice, challenging the decision-makers who seek to undercut us, divide us, or dismiss the issues of one worker group as not relevant to another worker group.”
UCW Is a Pre-Majority Union
There are tens of thousands of potential higher-education workers in each state, and hundreds of thousands overall. UCW has organized thousands of these workers at about 60 campus locations. Because this is a small percentage of all the workers, UCW is a “pre-majority” union. On some campuses or in some states, it might reach a majority in the future.
Because these workers have no formal union recognition or legal collective bargaining rights, the campaign strategy is to organize workers to fight for improvements in wages, benefits, and working conditions outside of formal contracts. Union action often leads to wins, even without the administration acknowledging the union’s role.
Because these workers have no formal union recognition or legal collective bargaining rights, the campaign strategy is to organize workers to fight for improvements in wages, benefits, and working conditions outside of formal contracts.
In conservative states with no public-sector collective-bargaining rights, the union advises that general Constitutional protections provide the right to organize. Per the union’s website:
“In states where public employees lack a framework for collective bargaining, constitutional Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association protections give you the right to join a labor union, and organize collectively to seek improvement of the terms and conditions of your employment.
“Political activities such as picketing, rallies, and leafleting on your lunch break or after work are forms of expression and free association, and are expressly protected.”
In 2022, faculty across all of the UCW locals have formed a national Faculty Defense Network to unite and fight back against nation-wide attacks on public higher education.
Union Structure and Functions
UCW receives staffing and funding assistance from the parent union CWA, and most locals have their own staff as well. Workers at each campus and in each state have autonomy in their organizing, but UCW does have an overall Fair Pay Platform as outlined on its website:
- Minimum starting pay of at least $15 an hour, $32,100 annually
- Annual cost of living increases
- Equal pay for equal work, including for adjunct faculty, graduate, and undergraduate workers
- Policies that address compression, pay inequities, and job segregation by race and gender
- Free higher education financed through fully funding public higher ed
- Secure jobs working directly for our public education institutions; no privatization
- High-quality, affordable employer-sponsored benefits such as healthcare, paid parental leave, and retirement
- The right to collectively bargain to have a voice in determining working conditions
In addition to traditional shop-floor organizing on issues that come up with direct supervisors, UCW union actions include holding rallies and marches, signing petitions, and political lobbying.
UCW has organized chapters across job categories at each campus, while also creating job-specific committees as needed. In their article in The Forge, UCW organizers emphasized the benefits of the chapter structure:
“Rather than dividing workers into separate organizing committees by job category, UCW unions meet as chapters to bring together all of the workers on a particular campus. This structure creates space for members across job categories to share their issues; have difficult conversations about topics such as pay differentials, power imbalances, gendered workloads, racism, and classism; and develop joint demands.”
Members pay dues directly to the union, as there is no payroll deduction collected by the employer. The union provides trainings and has an organizing toolkit that helps locals get started by forming a steering committee and holding organizing conversations. In addition to traditional shop-floor organizing on issues that come up with direct supervisors, UCW union actions include holding rallies and marches, signing petitions, and political lobbying.
Organizing Leads to Wins
UCW has racked up a number of victories over the years. The issues range from specific grievances of particular members to broader issues that impact everyone, according to UCW organizers in The Forge article.
“While UCW locals campaign on a broad range of member issues — low pay, high grad fees, lack of cost-of-living raises, pay equity — we unite around common, big-picture, and long-term demands: increased public support for higher education and decision-making power for workers and students.”
The union organized to stop a large-scale job privatization scheme in Tennessee, which could have potentially outsourced 10,000 jobs at the state’s university system. The union also won a salary increase for lecturers at UT-Knoxville and successfully fought to establish a $15 per hour minimum wage at the University of Memphis.
In Kentucky, UCW campaigning won a $15 per hour minimum wage at all campuses, impacting about 2,000 workers. The union also helped get a raise for grounds workers. It’s interesting that the administration in that case denied that the union had anything to do with the raise. But a UCW-Kentucky member explained the dynamic that wins often follow union action:
“I am not surprised that that is the message they’re putting out. But it is a little bit confusing. We have had multiple times where workers have taken action, and then something changes. Never attributed to us, of course, by the administration, but when we do things, things happen.”
In Virginia, they won clearer terms of employment for graduate workers in the Architecture school, as part of their Respect and a Fair Deal for Graduate Workers campaign. The union has also won a raise for adjunct professors, won reinstatement of a doctoral advisor for graduate student workers, defeated unilateral attempts by management to change term faculty contracts to terminal and ensured they stayed renewable, and forced an adjunct professor to be offered a full time job.
The UCW-Georgia local won the elimination of a special institutional fee that was imposed during the Great Recession and cost students about $450 per semester. The union has also exposed the relationship of the state’s higher education system with a private student housing company, which has a multi-billion dollar student housing contract and had lobbied the schools to reopen during the pandemic.
A recent win in Louisiana eliminated graduate workers fees, which can be up to $2,000 per semester. In Colorado, the union’s Fight for $15 campaign won a raise at the UC-Colorado Springs campus.
Fight to Legalize Bargaining Rights?
Debates within UCW are ongoing on the kind of organizing the union should be doing, including how and where to fight for more formal bargaining rights, which would require state labor law reform. All UCW chapters believe that building worker-power at the campus level is central. But in a handful of states where there may be an opportunity to align with other parts of the labor movement and win legalization of public-sector collective-bargaining rights, there are conversations about the level of priority the union should place on it.
Debates within UCW are ongoing on the kind of organizing the union should be doing, including how and where to fight for more formal bargaining rights, which would require state labor law reform.
One recent example of this struggle is in Colorado. While Colorado has passed collective bargaining rights for a narrow subset of state public employees—most recently extended to county workers in 2022—UCW-Colorado representatives were part of the process in 2022 of drafting a new collective bargaining bill that would cover higher education employees as well. When it became clear that the bill would prohibit workers’ right to strike, UCW-Colorado (along with the other public-sector, pre-majority unions in its local) voted to oppose the bill based on the assessment that workers would have more power in a pre-majority union than with highly restrictive collective bargaining rights.
The United Campus Workers of Virginia and Georgia are working on political programs to fight for strong public sector collective bargaining legislation. UCWGA worked with legislators in 2021 to introduce a public sector bargaining bill at the General Assembly. Municipal and county employees in Virginia won a limited bargaining framework in 2020, but it excluded state employees and higher education. Through their Political Coalition & Policy Committee, UCWVA members continue to fight for a strong bargaining framework for all public sector employees. They are very conscious that attempts may be made to exclude graduate student workers and intend to build enough power to ensure that grad student workers are included.
Showing What’s Possible
UCW is the largest pre-majority union campaign in the country and shows what’s possible for this kind of organizing. Moreover, it’s rare to see this level of commitment to comprehensive organizing throughout the South. CWA deserves a lot of credit for committing to long-term funding for a campaign that will likely take some time to become fully self-sustaining, but that in the meantime can lay an incredibly important foundation for more organizing in the South by the whole labor movement.
UCW is the largest pre-majority union campaign in the country and shows what’s possible for this kind of organizing.
P.S.
If you haven’t seen it yet, Linqua Franqa is a UCW member and gives a shoutout to the union in the award-winning labor anthem Wurk!
- Published