Two representatives from the Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees (GAGE) attended the second annual Higher Education Labor United (HELU) summit to develop policy proposals and coordinate with unions from universities across the United States. 

The summit, which took place from Feb. 23 to 27, included a series of events surrounding topics of anti-racism, social justice and HELU’s three program areas: coordinated organizing, policy development and advocacy and national political engagement. At the summit, HELU and participants from unions across the country built on the organization’s framework, contributing to the platform’s growth in member organizations since its first summit in July 2021.

The summit highlighted the shared beliefs and goals of unions across the country, according to Naomi Williams, program committee coordinator for the summit, rank-and-file member of HELU and labor historian at Rutgers University.

“The programming was inspiring,” Williams wrote to The Hoya. “I appreciated hearing of the work people are doing across the nation to help make campus jobs, good jobs and to support student learning. It was exciting to hear how aligned we are, across unions, with the things we are working toward. It was also great to be part of helping to shape the future of higher ed organizing and advocacy work.”

HELU, a national committee representing over 525,000 student workers, postdocs, staff and tenured faculty at universities across the country, has proposed enacting federal legislation to stabilize higher education employment with fair terms, safe working conditions and a living wage for workers. 

GAGE is a signatory on the HELU platform. 

It is important for unions to share their knowledge, according to GAGE representative and former GAGE President Jewel Tomasula (GRD ’22), who attended the summit.

“HELU gives me a lot of hope that these unions in higher ed are sharing their knowledge and resources to build a coordinated movement,” Tomasula wrote to The Hoya. “Unions improve conditions for workers on their own campuses, but together our unions can impact state and federal policies to improve the whole higher ed system.”

GAGE ratified its first contract with the university in May 2020 after months of negotiations over the rights and protections of graduate student workers, including pay, workload and time off. The contract is set to expire June 30, 2023, meaning the union must begin a new bargaining process with the university in fall 2022.

The summit brought a feeling of connectedness and shared purpose among union representatives, according to Tracy Berger, media and communications coordinator for the summit and a member of United Campus Workers Colorado, a union for employees in the University of Colorado system. 

“For us, working with other unions across the country is extremely important,” Berger wrote to The Hoya. “We’re a very young union and value being able to learn from others’ experiences. HELU gives us an opportunity to learn and share what we’re doing. UCW is a wall-to-wall union and I think more fragmented unions can learn a lot from our model, just as we can learn from them.” 

The summit also allowed GAGE to connect with members of unions at other universities, according to Maggie Weng (GRD ’24), who attended the summit.   

“GAGE was proud to be a contributing union that helped sponsor the summit, so our members were also able to attend the weekend sessions,” Weng wrote to The Hoya. “The summit generated a sense of solidarity with other higher ed labor unions, and it made me appreciate that the struggles we face at Georgetown are part of a larger dynamic that many people are fighting to change.”

The downward trend in public funding to universities has damaged the U.S. higher education structure, according to Tomasula.

“Despite college-level education becoming more and more important for the U.S. workforce, fewer and fewer public funding is being invested in institutions of higher education,” Tomasula wrote. “Instead of state and federal governments funding higher education, the cost is put on individual students and their families and this is evident in tuition rates that have skyrocketed more than inflation and average salaries.”

In 2018, the federal government invested $149 billion in colleges and universities through federal student aid, grants and contracts, representing 3.6% of federal spending. In 2022, states allocated a combined $105.5 billion for higher education institutions. 

A lack of investment in higher education has created a cycle forcing many young people to take on student loan debt to attend college, according to Tomasula.  

HELU’s hope is to coordinate university union efforts and remain adaptive to changing demands, according to Williams.

“We are an organization of organizations, so coordination takes transparency and coming together around shared values,” Williams wrote. “We are using the summit materials (where voting member unions shaped a path forward based on our continued commitment to our vision platform and agreement around the 3 core program areas) to shape an organizational structure. And we continue to get feedback from member organizations. It is a work in progress.”

Connecting in spaces like this summit provide inspiration for collective change, according to Weng.

“I think collective spaces like the HELU summit are a really great way to reinforce what we’ve all found to be true from union work: our voices are stronger together than apart,” Weng wrote. “Change comes from bringing people together and putting all of our individual efforts into something much larger to break down insurmountable problems into attainable goals.”