Written for Issue 24 of “Socialism Today”, which went to print August 26th. Subscribe to get a copy directly to your mailbox!
It’s no surprise students and young people are at the forefront of movements today, including unionization efforts and pro-Palestine protests both on and off campus. Gen Z is confronting economic injustices, large corporations, and US imperialism, demanding better wages and benefits, union protections, and an end to the US funding and backing of the Israeli state’s genocide.
While many are drawing anti-capitalist conclusions, the Trump regime is waging a fierce campaign to severely weaken the labor movement and to use militarized police, National Guard, and Marines to repress protestors. Socialist tactics and ideas can strengthen youth-driven struggles and movements by raising the need for mass protests and walkouts, occupations and strike action, which involves the whole of organized labor, and for movements to have an independent political component – crucially, an independent workers’ party – that can unify the larger working class with a new generation entering into political struggle.
Unionizing In Higher Ed: Student Workers are Workers Too
College has never been so expensive, nor forced so many people into crippling student loan debt. The costs of tuition and fees have ballooned by 27% over the last 10 years, with the average graduate strapped with $39,075 in federal student loan debt that they spend the next 20 years paying off. Housing costs have grown as well. Rents have increased by 54% over the last 10 years, with half of those who graduated in the last 5 years still living at home with family.
68% of students today are working while in school. with 4 out of 5 of them working over 20 hours a week and 41% working full-time. Young people are turning to unions as a way to tackle low wages and the cost-of-living crisis. Young people are currently facing one of the worst job markets since 2015, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Youth unemployment is around 10%, more than twice that of the general unemployment rate of 4.2%. A 2024 report by the Burning Glass Institute found that 88% of graduates are severely underemployed five years after they’ve graduated, making it difficult for those with college degrees to secure jobs that can help them pay off loans, not to mention afford to live. Credit card delinquencies for young adults under 30 have reached almost 10%, higher than for any other other age group. And the federal minimum wage is stuck at the same $7.25/hr that it has been at since 2009.
While union density is at a 60-year-low of 9.9%, union workers still make more than non-union workers. The median weekly earnings of a non-union worker are 85% that of union workers. Workers aged 16-24 are the age group least represented by unions (4.3%), yet young people are among the most energized propelling the labor movement forward with union drives at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, as well as at universities.
Ever since the NLRB ruled in 2016 that student workers are college employees and thus could form unions, many student workers have organized to win union representation. This has been especially the case among graduate workers, who made on average $19,000 in 2022-2023, with many also having no health insurance benefits through their on-campus jobs. Between 2012 and 2024, the number of graduate workers in unions increased from 64,424 to 150,104, a 133% increase. 38% of graduate workers are now union. Grad workers have organized unions at MIT, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Dartmouth College, the University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Johns Hopkins University, and Cornell, among many others.
There have been some significant contract fights in the last few years. In 2022-2023, grad workers in the University of California system went on strike in the largest higher ed strike in history. After 6 weeks, the 48,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) won improved wages, fee waivers, and 8 weeks of paid parental and medical leave. Grad workers at MIT organized into the United Electrical workers union (UE) and won their first contract in 2023, securing raises of 5.4%, 3.5%, and 3.25% over 3 years. This past March, grad workers at Cornell won a contract with starting stipends of $47,548, and $59,029 for Cornell Tech graduate workers. They also won free bus passes, more vacation days, a $544 benefits adjustment to cover vision and dental insurance coverage, and an additional one-time-payment of $1,300 upon ratification.
Undergraduate workers have also been unionizing as well. In 2012, there were no undergraduate worker unions; by 2022, there were 2. Today, there are over 30,000 undergraduate workers represented across at least 35 different union locals. Colleges have become major employers: for example, Arizona State University, employs 11,000 students each year.
Some of the recent major battles for undergraduate unions include last year’s union drive of 20,000 California State University undergrad workers who voted to organize with SEIU. This past April, after winning their union election by 97% and bargaining for 8 months, the 4,000 undergraduate members of the University of Oregon Student Workers (UOSW) organized with the UAW went on strike. They won the first undergrad worker contract in the country at a public institution after 10 days on picket lines. The Student Workers Collective, representing Dartmouth College student workers, went on strike this past May for 2 weeks and won a 3% pay increase for each of the next 3 years of the contract, along with a $400 training stipend, increased holiday pay and paid time off, and mental health leave, as well as protections from deportations.
University administrations have spent a lot of money hiring union-busting firms. The heavy attacks by college management contributed to UOSW only winning a $16/hr starting wage, instead of the $18.50 they had been aiming for. And UAW members in the University of California system found that the university management was getting around paying them their new starting rate of pay, $2,708/month,by assigning grad workers fewer hours per week so they don’t qualify for the new contract terms.
Universities will employ more union-busting tactics through cutting hours and positions and using AI and automation. To fight union-busting, unionized student workers will need to link up with non-union students and with other unions on their campuses, including those representing dining workers, faculty, and staff. They can also bring in the wider labor movement outside of their campuses, such as postal workers, teachers, healthcare workers, transportation and logistics workers, and municipal workers. Strikes involving the entire labor movement could shut down campuses through mass pickets. Student worker unions could coordinate contract fights across multiple campuses and states to win greater demands from higher education corporations. The broader working class should also join these workers in solidarity to help take on these million (or even billion) dollar universities that often gentrify cities, raise housing costs (since many are also corporate landlords), dodge taxes, and are part of the general driving down of wages and living standards.
Student Protests Repressed
Many grad and undergrad unions have taken up demands against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. In 2024, UAW members went on strike in University of California system to defend members against the crackdown on pro-Palestinian encampments.
In spring 2024, student encampments erupted nationwide protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and demanding their universities divest from Israel. Both Democratic and Republican parties sent militarized police to brutally crack down on students, injuring and arresting them. Among these was Boston Mayor Michelle Wu who claimed students “wanted to get arrested” — she sent Boston police officers out to join state police in brutally arresting 100 students. NYC mayor Eric Adams also brought NYC police out to crush student encampments and occupations, including those at Columbia, the New School, and the City College of New York. Adams met with corporate investors on a Zoom call and received offers for money to hire private investigators to target student activists.
Many colleges put protest policies in place, restricting where and whether students could protest. At UMass Boston, the administration now requires students and workers to ask permission to engage in their right to protest by filling out a form weeks in advance. At Emerson College, administration told students they’d be punished for protesting/setting up encampments in public spaces such as the Boston Common.
As part of their defense of corporate interests and the two corporate parties, administrations have made false claims toward safety, despite school managements being the ones making campuses unsafe and choosing to ramp up extreme police repression. This is no different from the way in which “safety” concerns have been used to justify the use of National Guard, Marines, and militarized police in Washington DC and LA this past summer
In the last few months, universities have continued their repression against students and their capitulation to the Trump administration. Columbia University suspended and expelled nearly 80 students in July, upped its police numbers, and paid the Trump administration $200 million in fines.
As students return to campus this fall, protests may start up again, especially as the Israeli military carries out a full military takeover of the entire Gaza strip and as an increasing number of Palestinians are forced by the Israeli state into starvation and are murdered as they seek food at fake “aid sites.”
Pro-Palestinian protests will need to engage the labor movement to strengthen future protests. If union workers can be organized to join the movement against the genocide, especially through refusal to ship arms and engage in walkouts, mass protests, and strikes there can be a more effective mass protest movement against the genocide and to stop military aid to Israel.
Being More Than Anti-Capitalist: Becoming an Active Socialist
Many young working-class people are drawing the conclusion that capitalism has nothing to offer them. The profit-driven economy, controlled by the likes of Amazon, Blackrock, and Exxon Mobile and which are represented and defended by the two corporate political parties, Democratic and Republican, has only led to an ongoing genocide, escalating climate change and pollution, and worsening living and working conditions.
While being able to identify the problem is one thing, coming up with a solution is another. Young people can draw from the militant history of workers’ struggles, union struggles, mass movements, and student movements, many of which were led by socialists and communists. To stop Trump, the ICE raids, and the genocide, unions need to help lead mass protests, walkouts, and strikes to stop the cuts to healthcare; the mass layoffs of unionized federal workers; the gutting of union contracts; and the widespread ICE kidnappings. Unions can also pool resources, staff, and draw on their $32 billion in assets to lead mass union drives in whole sectors of the economy including education, transportation, food service, retail, and logistics. These organizing efforts need to include defending immigrant workers, getting active in the streets and workplaces to stop ICE.
Gen Z activists can be a crucial part of an energized union movement pushing for unions to stop supporting the two corporate parties and their duopoly over electoral politics. Unions can help build a workers’ party or labor party that can unite the whole working class, including youth, community organizations, non-union workers, progressive activists, and the left. This kind of a party, run by working people with no corporate interests involved, can activate many who aren’t politically engaged or who see no way to change the status quo through the Republicans or Democrats.
A workers’ party can run serious mass campaigns for a $30/hr minimum wage and increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy. It can lead efforts and build a political home for the demands many young people have for free public higher education, cancellation of student loans, universal healthcare, well-paying union jobs to fight the climate crisis with a green jobs program, public housing, an end to genocide and imperialist wars. For a workers’ party to be able to take on capitalism, a socialist program and vision of the future is necessary. Join us to build a better world, a socialist one.
Independent Socialist Group 