“Graduate student workers have dedicated their lives to their fields of study, teaching, and critical research, but these jobs do not provide a living wage, affordable health care, or support for working parents,” said Carolyn Cargile, a Writing Center fellow and PhD candidate in English at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in a statement announcing today that an “overwhelming majority” of the school’s graduate workers have signed union authorization cards.

The graduate workers at the New York City school are organizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which also represents graduate workers at SUNY. Their union, Fordham Graduate Student Workers (FGSW), delivered a letter to Fordham president Fr Joseph M. McShane today requesting voluntary recognition of what they estimate is a roughly 350-person bargaining unit. They have filed for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election should Fordham refuse to voluntarily recognize the union.

The union drive is the latest in a spate of organizing efforts in higher education, which is as beleaguered as it’s ever been, with Department of Labor numbers showing that around 650,000 people lost their jobs in higher education just in 2020. Columbia University saw a 3,300-person strike by its unionized graduate workers late last year, shortly after some 3,500 faculty at the University of Pittsburgh unionized. Efforts to create a coalition of higher-ed unions are ongoing, a logical progression from the formation of 118 new faculty bargaining units, containing more than thirty-six thousand people, between 2013 and 2019.