Princeton Student Workers Union Authorization Card

As student workers, we are coming together as a union so we can force the university to listen to the voices of its students. We are part of a growing national movement at universities such as NYU, The New School, Harvard, Occidental, and the University of California, where unionized student workers have negotiated meaningful improvements to salary, benefits, and working conditions, as well as reforms to university policy.

Without collective bargaining, we have experienced stagnant salaries, inadequate benefits, and disregard for our concerns as students in university-wide decisions. If our democratic demands are secured in a collective bargaining agreement, Princeton cannot change the terms of our employment or our student life without our consent. As undergraduate employees across Princeton, we are forming a union in order to improve our working conditions and to make the university a more democratic, equitable, and accessible institution for teaching and learning.


Without a union:

Princeton's administration unilaterally determines our conditions as workers and as students, and it can change them at any time without our consent.

With a union:

  • We elect a bargaining committee that gathers input from undergraduates across campus.
  • Our bargaining committee negotiates on equal footing toward a fair agreement with Princeton.
  • We decide democratically, through a vote, whether to approve any agreement as our contract.
  • That contract secures our terms and conditions of employment and is binding and enforceable, usually through appeal to a neutral arbitrator.