Our Union Is Growing!

When a new faculty union at Michigan State University (MSU) finally won recognition, in 2025, it was like seeing a plant emerge from the soil—50 years after the seed was sowed.

After failed unionization efforts in the 1970s and 1990s, and years of organizing and hard-fought legal battles since 2020, MSU faculty have established the Union of Tenure System Faculty (UTSF).

“This is a historic victory for tenure-system faculty at MSU,” the UTSF Organizing Committee said in a joint statement. “For years, we have organized to secure a voice in decisions shaping the future of our institution.

… We can negotiate and advocate for the ideals that make our work possible.”

The new unit at MSU is just one of the new additions to the NEA family tree in the past year. For the first time since the pandemic, NEA ended the 2024 – 2025 membership year up nearly 12,000 members over the previous year’s totals. That means the number of new members far exceeded the number of memberships dropped in that same time period.  

What made the difference at MSU?

“It wasn’t one thing, it was a pileup of things,” says Evan Eslinger, who, alongside NEA colleagues, spent five years organizing the roughly 1,900 tenured faculty. “It was the MSU administration’s actions that gave us a tipping point in this campaign,” he notes.

For one thing, the administration had slashed the salaries and retirement benefits of non-union employees during the pandemic.

They had also canceled long-standing campus diversity initiatives, such as the cherished Chinese New Year celebration. And they signaled that they weren’t going to stand up for academic freedom on campus.

Another key factor in the MSU campaign—and every organizing campaign—was the hard work that educators put into one-on-one conversations with their peers.

“When educators do the organizing, they are really building a community,” Eslinger says. “That’s how we grow our union and sustain that growth.”

Summaries provided by NEA’s Center for Organizing.