NEA Today for NEA Higher Ed, October 2026

What I Learned From My First Union

I hope you noticed that the cover of this magazine features a hardworking graduate student. I am excited to see this focus because my own journey into union activism started as a grad-student worker.

I did not enter graduate school as an activist, organizer, unionist, or agitator. But when the administration at Wayne State University, in Detroit, threatened to unilaterally reduce the health insurance of teaching and research assistants, the Graduate Employee Organizing Committee (GEOC) was created, and I became energized. In quick order, the GEOC ran a successful card drive, won a recognition election, and commenced contract negotiations.

The GEOC’s efforts reshaped Wayne State and pushed me to see colleges and universities through a different lens. These changes, institutional and personal, were directly influenced by many individuals and groups. Unionized faculty 
members at my university, union organizers, and union members elsewhere—
notably the grad-student union at the University of Michigan—provided support and guidance to help me and the GEOC develop a collective vision for our union.

I carried those experiences and lessons with me when I moved on to my teaching post at a community college, where I immediately helped support and grow that local union. Today, while I advocate on a broader national level, I come back to the foundational principles of my graduate-student organizing days.

Higher education is a public good that requires collective action to preserve and promote this resource. Our success requires that we recognize and advocate for all workers laboring at our colleges and universities. Look around, make 
connections with other departments and units. Those linkages make us stronger and build campuses that come closer to meeting the vision we have for higher education.