US student worker unions face threats under second Trump administration

Student workers are bracing for the incoming Trump administration to “constrict or eliminate” their labor rights, after a surge in union organizing on college campuses.

Nearly 45,000 student employees formed unions between 2022 to 2024 between 44 bargaining units. As of earlier this year, an estimated 38% of all graduate student employees in the US were unionized.

But organizers fear this trend will stutter as Trump prepares to return to office. During his first presidency, officials tried to exclude 1.5 million private college and university student employees from exercising collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act, arguing these workers were not “employees”.

While the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the country’s top labor watchdog, withdrew this proposal months after Joe Biden took office in March 2021, Trump’s re-election sets the stage for another battle.

William A Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, predicted sweeping changes under Trump once his administration overhauls the labor watchdog.

“Once President Trump appoints a new majority of NLRB board members, future decisions by that majority are likely to constrict or eliminate existing labor rights on private sector campuses,” said Herbert.

Trump may try again to overrule a 2016 decision which held that graduate and undergraduate student employees were covered under the National Labor Relations Act, Herbert suggested, and the new NLRB general counsel could modify or abandon the board’s current approach to college athletes.

At some colleges, student workers are trying to pre-empt such action.

“There is that feeling of knowing of what may or may not happen next in the new year,” said Dia Brown, an engineering graduate student employee at Penn State. “It just makes it feel more important to keep pushing forward.”

Earlier this month, a union election petition was filed with the Pennsylvania labor board by the Coalition of Graduate Employees at Penn State-UAW to represent around 5,000 graduate student employees.

Trump’s victory “makes it even more important to make sure that we get this [union] election, so that we can get into bargaining, get a contract and get more security for all of our grad students”, said Brown who cited securing protections for international students as a top priority in the face of Trump’s plan to enact mass deportations. Some schools around the US have advised international students to arrive on campuses before Trump takes office.

“My expenses are so cutthroat with the funding that I get through my stipend each month,” Brown added. “I want me and … other grad students like me, who are struggling financially with the current stipends, to be able to feel confident to meet their needs, and meet their living expenses too.”

“They really need to make this a better, more secure workplace and ultimately a better institution,” added Owen Harrington, a geography graduate student employee at Penn State. “So it’s about time.”

A date for a union election has not yet been set by the Pennsylvania labor board.

A spokesperson for Penn State said in an email: “When we receive the petition, we will carefully review it, taking all perspectives into account. We remain committed to open dialogue as we move forward in this process.”

Elsewhere, however, graduate student employees attempting to unionize have already hit resistance as colleges await the second Trump presidency.

At Vanderbilt, a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, graduate student workers filed a petition for a union election to join the United Auto Workers in October, with the university opposing the effort, claiming they were students rather than workers.

The university also filed a complaint against the NLRB, which had requested student information to determine the scope of the union election and prospective bargaining unit. After a judge ruled in the university’s favor, the UAW withdrew the election petition earlier this month.

Such withdrawals have been a rarity in recent years: graduate student workers won over 90% of union elections from 2022 to 2024, often in landslide votes at some of the top universities in the US,.

“The union’s decision to withdraw its petition and demand provides a path for us to move forward together,” Vanderbilt officials said in a statement.

But Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United made clear it was not backing down. “This is not a defeat,” it said in a statement, claiming the university “beat the law and got lucky with national political events. They did not beat US!”

As thousands of student workers attempt to unionize, national political events will probably have an outsized impact on their efforts in the years ahead.