Fall 2026 Newsletter

• You and your coworkers raised over $3,000 for workers affected by UofL's reduction in force (RIF)! Each affected worker who applied has received a $400 disbursement to help support them during their transition. We are still collecting funds to support RIF’d workers. Donate here if you have the means, and share this link with RIF’d workers to apply for funds. 
  
  

• Our Campus Organizing Committee is starting a financial analysis of the university’s budget to gain a deeper understanding of the university’s current fiscal situation. This analysis will equip us with the knowledge to effectively counter the austerity measures we are hearing from UofL’s administration. If you're interested in learning more or getting involved in this important work, reach out at [email protected].

• UCW member leaders met with Lt. Governor Jacqueline Coleman and other labor leaders from across the state to discuss labor issues affecting workers at UofL and higher education more broadly.

UCW-UofL Start of Semester Social!
Friday, August 21st, 2026, 5 pm - RSVP here! 

Join us for a UofL-UCW Union Social to kick off the start of the 2026 Fall Semester! We'll gather at 5 pm at Logan Street Market, located at 1001 Logan St, Louisville KY. Come together to share in good company, conversation, and strategizing for the year ahead. Families and friends, members and non-members - all are welcome!

UCW 101: Organizing Basics
Tuesday, September 25th, 2026, 6ET - Register Here

In this 75-minute training, we will review and discuss some of the fundamentals that guide our United Campus Workers organizing strategy, and leave with next steps for applying these fundamentals on their campus and in their workplace. Any and all United Campus Workers members are encouraged to attend.

Can't make it?Check here for more trainings happening this fall!

KyPolicy and UCW-CWA are surveying public higher education workers to inform statewide efforts to improve working and learning conditions.

• The data in this survey will be aggregated for use in KyPolicy and UCW-CWA's legislative advocacy, reports, press releases, and other communications. Individual responses with identifying information will not be shared.

UCW IN THE NEWS

Outsourcing initiatives at the University of Kentucky are drawing protests from union workers.

"The United Campus Workers of Kentucky and Service Employees International Union rallied against the moves by UK to reorganize hundreds of jobs across a number of departments under the banner of a program called Integrate Blue.

While UK says the centralization effort will improve efficiency, campus workers worry their union protections, benefits, and other employment agreements could be impacted.

UK has said some of the employees in affected departments could become part of a different organizational structure or report to different supervisors, the integration will not result in job losses or impact pay or benefits." Read more here

"Workers want unions, now more than at any time in recent history. But what if you work someplace where "official" recognition and contract bargaining would be a big hurdle, at least in the short term? What if the company is so big and has so many locations they can just ignore you and refuse to bargain? Or what if you're a public servant in states like Texas or Utah, where union contracts are banned in the public sector (at least for now)? What do you do then?

The answer is actually simple: Don't wait — form a union anyway!" Read more here 

"On Monday, the Trump Administration and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon resumed its fanatical campaign to mold America’s higher education system into its extreme ideological vision. The so-called “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards” is an attempt to bring back its extreme Higher Ed Compact, which campus workers and courageous higher ed leaders from across the country resisted and ultimately defeated last year.

Though some of the most severe elements of Compact 1.0 have been revised, this second version rehashes many of Trump’s grievances and mischaracterizations of our universities and the people who teach, work, and study there. Compact 2.0 may be disguised as concern for free expression, safety, affordability, and accessibility, but working people are not fooled by this fig leaf. This Administration has slashed funding for research, viciously repressed free expression and assembly, attacked student diversity, and repeatedly pursued punitive litigation against universities that resist its agenda.

What they want is to destroy higher education in America by attacking its faculty, staff, students, and institutions.

No doubt there are real challenges with the higher education system in this country, from the rising price of tuition the Trump Administration will not help alleviate to the unregulated proliferation of AI the Trump Administration supports to the existential cuts to research and discovery the Trump Administration itself has made. Compact 2.0 does nothing to address these challenges.

Real change will come from the participation of the people who make our campuses work and run and the people who they serve; it will not come from threats nor from misleading claims and misinformation. Our union and our allies must mobilize to stop Compact 2.0 just as we helped stop Compact 1.0 and continue to push a program that defends our higher education system from these attacks, even as we seek to transform and expand it in support of our students, public education, discovery, and democracy." Read more here

United Campus Workers of Kentucky is the wall-to-wall campus and public healthcare employees union for the Commonwealth of Kentucky representing faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate workers. Together, we are fighting to make positive change for all campus workers and public institutions that truly serve the public good!