Well, that's great. It's the same opinion held by some grad worker organizers in the UAW who think it was unacceptable for Fain to endorse dems because of Palestine. Personally, I'm interested in actual plans, not the feeling that a plan is needed

Obviously not, it would be insane and disastrous

I don’t think there is one and I think serious people are going to keep organizing within the UAW

I agree that what Trump is doing is existential for higher ed labor. But what’s the concrete vision for a near term break with the UAW that actually decreases the likelihood that Trump will succeed in destroying higher ed?

the effects of academic workers leaving the UAW en masse right now would, i think, pretty obviously hurt the goals of both building the higher labor movement and beating Trump. Like, a bunch of grad unions suddenly become resourceless and the UAW president ends up someone like Sean O'Brien?

not to mention the fact that any viable alternative to Fain in UAW leadership will 100 percent be way, way worse on national politics

AAUP is starting to get serious with their new administration, and maybe eventually it does make sense for all of higher ed labor to exist in a single organization, but right now from the perspective of any individual organizing campaign, I think UAW is still the obvious choice.

And the international hosted a know-your-rights training for international student workers. The union is taking the Trump attacks on higher ed very seriously, and as far as I know is still putting substantially more resources into higher ed organizing than any other union.

Fain and the union leadership have been very active supporting higher ed organizing against Trump. Small examples, but he showed up to a phone bank where higher ed workers were calling retirees to organize them against NIH cuts.

Yeah no offense but as a current member of the union at Penn who’s been organizing since the beginning of this iteration, it’s been very very clear that affiliating with the UAW was the right call, regardless of bad tariff takes from Fain. and that AFT low key fucked up the previous campaign.

To be fair, the UAW has probably done more than any of the old industrial unions to organize workers in postindustrial industries (in UAW's case, eds and meds). Shawn Fain supporting the tariffs sucks but in terms of the UAW's commitment of resources it's not just trying to turn back the clock.