Some non-tenured faculty at Syracuse University are trying to unionize to standardize their workloads and gain rights in the workplace. They will vote April 22 and 23 on whether to form the union. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

Hundreds of educators and researchers that make up almost 20% of Syracuse University’s faculty want to form a union. 

The union would include around 350 postdoctoral researchers, teaching professors, professors of practice and research professors, if a majority of those workers vote to unionize at an election on April 22 and 23.

They’re seeking transparency and fairness around contract renewals, more lenient contracts for international faculty, more equitable pay and a say in how decisions in their workplace are made.

Their union drive comes at a time when university administrators plan to cut or pause almost 100 academic programs in a move that administrators have said is a re-alignment to accommodate student demand.

If successful, non-tenure track, full-time workers would join the close to 4,000 unionized workers at Syracuse. Some workers say they see wall-to-wall union representation at the university as a way to collectively cope with uncertainty around research funding, a difficult job market, volatile changes to labor and immigration laws and the whims of an industry that moves at a breakneck pace. 

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” said Wren Vetens, a postdoc at the university’s physics departments. “Having better workplace norms and protections for graduate students, even before we have a union… there is some trickling effect to the lives of other workers.”

Workers got the union drive underway in October and are organizing with the Service Employees International Union Local 200United. So far they have garnered the endorsement of 78 tenured or tenure-track faculty members who have as of April 15 signed a letter of support. 

Syracuse University spokespeople did not respond to questions posed by Central Current for this story.

Central Current spoke to five of the hundreds of workers in the bargaining unit who described the issues non-tenured full-time faculty face. These types of professors and researchers teach about 33% of the total credit hours in a semester, according to an open letter published by workers.

Jiwoon Yulee, an assistant teaching professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, said non-tenured track faculty are a relatively new and expanding unit at the university and does not have a truly representative body in the university’ decision making. 

“We have been siloed,” she said. “We don’t really know how these kinds of important decisions are made. A union can do a lot of work intervening in these blurry areas, demanding transparency.”

Contracts, expectations, and workload

When Ari Gratch, an assistant teaching professor at the university’s Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, read the job description for his current position two years ago, he did not know he would have to work more than the expectations outlined in the description. 

He expected to teach two large, 100-student classes per year and two other classes per semester, while also supervising graduate students teaching in the department. 

A representative of the university called him after his job interview and told him there would be an increased teaching load for that position and asked if Gratch was still interested in the job. 

“That was kind of a red flag, like you apply for one position and then they change the position mid-hiring process,” Gratch said. 

His predecessor taught for 35 hours per week, while also running the department’s annual public speaking competition, and overseeing graduate students teaching their first course. 

Gratch now prepares his classes and teaches for 45 hours per week, supervises graduate students who teach courses, runs the public speaking contest and is preparing an educational assessment of his department for the university. 

His experience captures key issues workers believe the union could address: a high workload, additional duties that can sometimes go unpaid and uncertainty around expectations for workers.

Heavy workloads have become a source of concern for workers. Some say that departments are starting to institute teaching loads that require workers to teach four classes in the spring semester and another four in the fall. Depending on the type of professorship or research position workers are contracted for, heavier workloads have several impacts. 

In the case of Yulee, the women’s and gender studies professor, the workload would make it difficult for her to mentor her students, continue her research, write a book she has been contracted for and also fulfill the duties in her department that are not related to teaching and research. Yulee said she works with 100 students on average per semester. 

In addition, she said, when students attend a university like Syracuse in the top tier of research institutions in the country, there are high expectations for students and researchers to produce new knowledge. 

There is also the expectation that the faculty at the university and that the curriculum will be on the cutting edge of a particular field, Yulee added. 

“We are expected to do all the research activities in our extra time,” Yulee said. 

Research and teaching are only two of the functions expected of non-tenured track professors, workers said. Service work like serving on department committees, participating in research organizations and organizing department events are all part of expectations from departments that are often unspecified in workers’ job duties and contracts, workers said.

That uncertainty can put pressure on workers who are either looking for a promotion or find themselves unsure if and when their contract will be renewed, Gratch said. 

Workers said they want to either be compensated accordingly for this type of work or to see it count in their contract as part of their job duties. 

“Sometimes it is ‘just keep doing everything we tell you to do, get paid the same amount, and you might get your contract renewed,’” he said.

‘I don’t feel safe traveling locally in this country any more.’

Academic workers, the funding that undergirds their research and their future job prospects have come under attack from President Donald Trump’s administration, workers said. 

They hope that forming a union can empower them to weather a storm of changing immigration laws, cuts to grants that shore up the costs of research and uncertainty around funding to higher education institutions. 

For Yulee, who is an international scholar from South Korea, the past year and half has been tense. She has been at Syracuse University for four years, having renewed her two-year contract, and with it her H-1B work visa, once right before Trump took office. 

“It creates so much pain in my life,” Yulee said. “My colleagues are telling me you should never mention your visa status, but how can I then talk about the problems?”

Stricter rules around proof of admissibility back into the U.S. for H-1B visa holders, as well as long wait times for re-entry stamps at U.S. embassies and consulates in other countries has made employers recommend workers not to leave the country. This has led H-1B visa holders like Yulee stranded in the U.S.

“I cannot travel at all,” she said. “I don’t feel safe traveling locally in this country anymore.”

Yulee said she and other international workers receive assistance from lawyers at the university to wade through the immigration system. But for international postdocs who are mostly on one-year contracts, the anguish of navigating a rapidly changing system comes yearly.

Yulee and Vetens, the postdoc at the university’s physics department, said these workers have to renew their visa every time they renew their contract. They have to travel internationally to renew it and that typically includes an added renewal fee.

Vetens said her department employs 40% of postdocs at the university. Almost half of them, she added, are international workers. 

“So many of my colleagues are terrified right now about the immigration situation in particular,” Vetens said.

Workers say they would like to negotiate longer term contracts for postdocs to give international workers more room to plan for their visa renewals and have longer-term certainty about their work. The University of California system’s union secured two-year contracts for postdocs in 2022.

Yulee’s work centers on labor movements in East Asia. She worries international professors working on social justice are at risk of retaliation for their scholarship based on expanding government definitions of domestic terrorism.

“They could always find something in my CV and in my speech,” she said. “We are facing even more severe surveillance and restrictions in terms of academic freedom.”

Funding for postdocs has also come under fire under the Trump administration. Vetens, whose postdoc funding comes primarily from grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, said she has been actively in the job market almost from the moment she arrived at Syracuse University. The Trump administration cut or suspended more than 5,843 research grants administered by the NSF in 2025, making Vetens feel like her postdoc funding was in jeopardy.

“It is essentially forcing me on to the job market extremely early, and that’s actually taking away from my ability to do research because I have to spend so much time on the academic job market,” she said. “We don’t have any institutional protections or reimbursement for career development.”

Workers will vote on whether to unionize on April 22 and 23 at Skybarn on South Campus.

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...