The past two years have seen a fresh wave of graduate worker militancy marked by bold strikes, new organizing drives, and whopping union election victories. Indeed, the six largest union filings with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2022 were all for graduate worker unions.

Amid this surge, one union is showing up a surprising amount: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, or the UE. Graduate worker union drives affiliated with the UE have popped up at Indiana University Bloomington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, Princeton University, University of Minnesota, Stanford University, and elsewhere.

With around thirty-five thousand members, the UE is not a huge union. It was once the third-largest — and arguably the most left-wing and democratic — member of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, with around a half-million members in core industries, until it fell victim to postwar anti-communist purges, raids from other unions, and plant shutdowns. But the union revived itself by the 1990s. Famously, UE workers at the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago occupied their plant in 2008, and today the union boasts a range of affiliated locals across sectors and industries from California to Vermont.