This story is part of our monthly series, Campus Dispatch. Read the rest of the stories in the series here.

Student workers fill a unique position in campus employment. On top of pursuing an education, they often take jobs as research or teaching assistants, resident assistants, or tour guides, all of which help universities function.

These roles benefit students by helping them get hands-on experience, and professors by getting extra help in the classroom to better allocate their own time. All the while, university administrators benefit from being able to offer low wages and minimal benefits to qualified and capable students because they often work semester-by-semester.

While these students do often receive tuition waivers, not every graduate program covers tuition, and may not cover graduate program fees forcing students to pay out of pocket or take on loans to cover them. And student workers still need to pay for housing, food, and other necessities (including childcare for parenting student workers)—and their wages often barely cover these expenses.

In addition, many student workers experience discrimination, harassment, and bullying in their workplaces. Academic bullying for student workers comes with the threat of cancelled positions and funding, and for international students, the additional threat of a cancelled visa.

To combat these negative working conditions, student workers have turned to unionization to utilize their right to collective bargaining, or the process through which people represented by a union negotiate bread-and-butter provisions like higher wages, paid leave, and health insurance coverage.. In recent years, unionization has surged on college and university campuses among student workers. Between 2012 and 2024, the number of unionized graduate student workers have increased by 133 percent and since 2022, 45,000 student workers have unionized.

In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and the re-election of Donald Trump, student unions are increasingly bargaining for reproductive health and gender-affirming care coverage and protections, too.

Health insurance helps students work better

Emily Via, a sociology doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago and lead negotiator of the bargaining committee of GEO Local 6297 explained that access to contraception is important to them because an unplanned pregnancy would be “catastrophic” at this point in their life.

“I’m finishing my dissertation, I don’t have a long-term partner or spouse, I live with a roommate. Abortion is amazing and great, and I’d have complex emotions about it,” they said. “I’d also have to take the time out of my day and manage to pay for it.”

They pointed out that abortion care would not be as expensive thanks to their student health insurance and their union, but taking the time to get an abortion would still be disruptive to their work.

Via also said that receiving gender-affirming care allows them to feel more comfortable in their environment, a sentiment echoed by University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate and unionized student worker, Sam Samore.

“I need gender-affirming care to function at the most basic level,” Samore said. “It allows me to put my personal life in the background in the ways I need to when I’m doing my work for Penn or working on my studies as a student.”

Both Samore and Via said members of their respective unions were vocal about needing health insurance coverage for reproductive health and gender-affirming care needs, and both were of direct interest for their bargaining.

Both noted an issue with how their health insurance’s limited provider network impacts their members’ ability to seek gender-affirming care. With so few available in-network providers, many face year-long or longer waitlists for treatments like hormone therapy, facial feminization surgery, and other services. By the time some students can finally access this care, they may be close to or have already graduated. Given this lack of access, one of these unions’ bargaining priorities will be to expand their in-network provider lists.

Negotiating with universities

During the collective bargaining process, student workers and their union representatives negotiate directly with university administrators, which can include staff whose job is to work with labor representatives. In other cases, board members may negotiate with labor unions.

How a school’s board members are selected and approved is consequential for union members because the makeup of these boards often determines how power is distributed and maintained. Board member selection varies depending on type of institution. Public institutions’ board members are often political appointees selected by a governor or state legislature. Board members in Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, and Nevada are selected by popular vote. Boards at private institutions are often selected by alumni or existing board members.

Samore pointed out that even though private university board members and trustees may seem immune to political influence, the people who make up the boards have strong political alignments, and their interests may be different than those of students.

“I trust my union to have my back,” Samore said. “I don’t trust billionaire finance executives who are on record saying that they already think Penn is too liberal or whatever. I don’t trust them to have my back. As much as we can, you know, take power from those people and put it in the hands of workers and students, that is what will protect people at Penn who need gender-affirming care or reproductive care.”

Collective bargaining in practice

Finding the right people for bargaining can be a difficult process for newer unions.

GETUP-AUW members at the University of Pennsylvania are currently negotiating their first contract after a successful unionization election in May 2024. According to Samore, one of the main issues they are running into is simply having the right people at the right time.

“We’re struggling to get Penn to send people to the bargaining room who know the details of our workplaces and who are capable of negotiating with us about our contract proposals,” they said.

As part of the bargaining process, the union and administrators are expected to negotiate in good faith. Failures to do so could result in costly intervention by the National Labor Review Board (NLRB). If employers declare an impasse, the union has the right to disagree and file an unfair labor practice charge, at which point the NLRB will review the circumstances and determine whether a true stand-off occurred. Some university administrators use tactics to stall progress because they know once an impasse has been declared, the administrators can implement the last offer made to the union, which may not be in a union’s favor.

Across the country in Tucson, Arizona, Miranda Lopez, a master’s candidate at the University of Arizona and UCWAZ Local 7065 treasurer, said some state university administrators were more receptive to some types of health care than others.

“Reproductive health care is something we’ve talked about with the Board of Regents,” Lopez said. “They say it should be available, but we’ll run into situations like at Northern Arizona University where they don’t have access to an abortion provider. In practice, they are not on top of it as they want to be.”

She explained that pushing for gender-affirming care is trickier because of politics in the state.

“A lot of the Board of Regents members don’t want to rock the boat because they’ll be punished by the legislature and hit with reallocations [of funding],” Lopez said. “But at this point, they’re cutting the funding every year so you might as well piss them off and go for it anyways.”

Despite this, Lopez pointed out that there are some hopeful changes because of the union’s collective efforts, including showing up to Board of Regents meetings.
Compared to prior years, Lopez explained, the Board of Regents have proactively asked for money from the legislature rather than taking a passive, “wait-and-see” approach.

As a result, Lopez said, the board has taken a more proactive approach to securing funding from the state legislature, which ultimately aids in union negotiations.

Preparing for a second Trump administration

As graduate student workers across the country negotiate with their administrations, an already tough task in good circumstances, the advent of a second Trump administration also brings up another threat to graduate worker unions and collective bargaining rights. For student workers who have reproductive health or gender-affirming care needs, any throttling or outright elimination of these bargaining rights directly threatens their ability to get the care they need.

Even for seasoned unions, such as GEO at UIC in Chicago which has represented graduate student workers since 2006, negotiations require significant preparation. This has only increased since the 2024 election results. Though contract negotiations for GEO will not begin until the spring, Via explained that one of the factors they have had to consider is that Illinois may not always be a safe haven for reproductive health and gender-affirming care.

“Right now, abortion, in vitro fertilization, and contraception are covered … but how do we make it so they’re covered in every plan we have?” Via asked. Currently, nothing could stop the university from revoking coverage for these services at its on-campus clinic or switching to a private option that doesn’t cover them. “We’re really thinking about language in the contract that they have to cover X, Y, and Z things and how comprehensive we want it to be,” they said.

Via also said their union lawyer recommended a Project 2025 reading group. They explained though it was a grueling task, it provided them with potential strategies and considerations for contractual safeguards.

“It’s easy to hear Trump is getting re-elected and panic, but then we need to sit down and plan on the wording they may use, anticipate, and how do we craft something future-proof against that type of policy,” Via said. “Being from Florida and the South, I try not to take things for granted that things are safe. Illinois seems safe now and probably will be for the foreseeable future, but being a blue state doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about losing access.”

Samore said GETUP-AUW’s short-term strategy for responding to the second Trump administration is to first win a “good contract as fast as possible.” Longer-term, however, the union has been coalition-building and organizing within departments and across campus.

“One thing that gives me hope is that the academic labor movement is in a different place compared to 2017,” Samore said. “It will be much harder to stop the wave of labor organizing happening now than it was in 2016 or 2017.”

In Arizona, Samore’s observation rings true: UCWAZ has taken the additional step of lobbying for the first time. In addition to negotiating with their Board of Regents, UCWAZ will also be focusing on pushing its representatives to create change and improve protections for their members alongside other unions in the state.

“We’re not the biggest union but we’ve had such an impact on all three [state] universities over the last few years,” Lopez said. “I wasn’t expecting us to have this much of an impact, and I’m excited to see what the future holds for us.”

“They’re having to listen to us now,” she said.