STATEMENT: After Trump Election, Higher Ed Unions Vow to Keep Up the Fight
As organized workers in higher education, we recognize that president-elect Donald Trump’s so-called “pro-worker” agenda is a complete farce. In fact the MAGA Republican agenda is pro-corporate, anti-immigrant, and a threat to all working people. But the Democratic Party is not without blame. They would rather explain their defeat by blaming voters than by taking responsibility for their own record and their own program, which failed to inspire enthusiasm among workers who are struggling to make ends meet. It is urgent that all organized workers in higher education prepare to take action and continue the movement for justice in our workplaces and classrooms.
The right wing agenda for higher education is clear. Project 2025 proposes to eliminate the Department of Education, eliminate public student loans, and roll back civil rights by making it easier for employers to discriminate without any consequences. Trump has repeated racist lies about immigrants and promised to implement xenophobic anti-immigrant policies like aggressively deporting tens of millions of immigrants, allowing ICE raids in schools, and imposing more onerous and arbitrary measures to block international students at the border. Trump’s first term showed a version of these policies: just one week after his first inauguration, Trump banned travel for immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, stranding many international students and workers abroad and denying them their education. A reinstatement and expansion of these policies would be devastating for higher ed students and workers.
A Trump presidency will also make the legal landscape for unionization even more tenuous than it already is. The previous Trump NLRB attempted to roll back the right to unionize for graduate workers at private universities, and they will likely try again. Starting immediately, Trump’s election provides cover to university administrations to violate and disregard existing labor rights and contractual protections. Project 2025 also calls on Congress to ban public sector unions, ban card check as a method of union recognition, allow states to ban private sector unions, and make it easier for employers to fire workers for organizing.
The Republicans’ political strategy against higher education is to present a caricature of colleges and universities as "liberal elites" who have opposite interests from blue collar and rural workers. We belong to unions that unite workers across all these sectors. We have common interests with workers from all walks of life regardless of their vote for Trump or Harris or anyone else, and we must stand together to take on this corporate onslaught. We refuse to be divided against each other.
Trump’s policies are designed to crush organized labor on our campuses and make American universities another battleground for the right wing’s anti-immigrant, anti-worker agenda. But we will not allow this to happen. We know that our power comes from our unity and organization, and higher education workers are more organized than ever. Since Trump’s last term, tens of thousands of academic workers have formed unions and bargained first contracts. Union density among graduate workers is now nearly 40%. We not only refuse to go back, but we will continue marching forward. We cannot and will not wait four years to organize. Regardless of who is in the White House, we resolve to keep fighting for justice in our workplaces and our world. We call on all university leadership to stand against these attacks on students and workers on our campuses. University leadership that sides with the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant, anti-worker agenda will face organized resistance—including strikes—on an unprecedented scale.