News from AFT Higher Ed Archive

In her latest column, AFT President Randi Weingarten reflects on the true meaning of Labor Day—not just barbecues and back-to-school sales, but a day rooted in the struggle for workers’ dignity. She calls out the Trump-Vance administration’s betrayal of working people through Project 2025 and the so-called big, beautiful bill; and she reminds us why union power is essential: to fight for fair pay, healthcare, public schools, and a democracy that works for all. “Unions enable working people not just to ask for things from those in power, but to have some power of their own,” she writes.

Workers built this country, and workers deserve an economy, a government and a country for the people, not the billionaires. In the streets and on the shop floor, in union halls and the halls of Congress, this Labor Day we’re going to show the billionaires who we are and how we fight. Find an event near you to join in the fight.

The so-called big, beautiful bill that Trump and his cronies passed in July is really a big, ugly betrayal, stripping critical funding from our colleges and universities to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy—making a college education more unaffordable for all of us and completely unobtainable for some. It eliminates nearly $300 billion in student aid and millions from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, impacting our most vulnerable students. Join us at a webinar Aug. 26 at 3 p.m. EDT to unpack this harmful legislation. Register here. Image: zimmytws/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

Think you’ll take away our diversity, equity and inclusion programs? Think again. The AFT and the American Sociological Association just won a court battle against Donald Trump’s Education Department, which threatened to cut federal funding to schools that continued DEI efforts. “It is our job as educators to prepare students with the skills they need to negotiate a diverse and complex world,” says AFT President Randi Weingarten. “This decision rightly strikes down the government’s attempt to dictate curriculum, and, in so doing, upholds the purpose and promise inherent in our public schools.” Image: Joe Shlabotnik/flickr.

 

Collective bargaining is not only an essential tool for securing better wages and working conditions; it is a way to enshrine civil rights and defend our basic freedoms at a time when they are under assault. That was the message at the AFT’s Collective Bargaining Conference July 23 in Washington, D.C., where union leaders from across the country were trained up and inspired by remarks from AFT President Randi Weingarten, who suggested collective bargaining is one of the most powerful economic rights available to workers today.

 

Nearly every person in Gaza needs urgent humanitarian assistance. Two million Palestinians have been displaced, and the entire population is facing dire food insecurity. According to UNICEF, 80 percent of those who have died from malnutrition during this war were children. This is an immediate crisis that requires our intervention. Please donate today to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund for Gaza Humanitarian Aid.