Transforming Higher Education

Movement Milestones and Victories

We’re working to improve learning and teaching conditions and access to higher education, while standing up to end the trend toward a low-road, corporate-business model for education. More than 50,000 faculty and graduate workers are already united through SEIU Faculty Forward. Every day more educators, students and community members across the country are joining our fight to transform higher education. Here’s a look at what we’ve accomplished together so far.

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Iowa workers talk Unions for All with Joe Biden

Low wage workers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hosted former Vice President Joe Biden for a roundtable discussion with coffee, pie and the Unions for All demand. At the kitchen table of a worker’s home, Biden was presented with questions centering around the need for good union jobs in Iowa. The discussion included McDonald’s fast food workers in the Fight for $15 and a Union movement, an adjunct professor with Faculty Forward and a home care/Head Start worker.

Landon Elkind, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, had a powerful exchange with Biden on how to support union rights for adjunct faculty in order to address workplace conditions and other issues professors face. Biden talked about his support of sectoral bargaining and what he would do to make it easier for people to join unions.

Sara Haugse, a home care worker who works a second job as a Head Start teacher, pushed Biden on his stance on workers making a decent wage, so they don’t have to manage multiple jobs to make ends meet. The former Vice President responded, saying he understands unions are powerful leverage that working people have to get big corporations and employers to listen.

  • Check out this powerful video of Iowa workers and their Unions For All fight!