By Raymond Hogler , Colorado State University

On April 24, graduate students at Yale University announced a hunger strike in support of Local 33 of Unite Here , a labor union that represents workers in a variety of industries (including higher education) in dozens of cities across North America.

Their demands? They want Yale to recognize their union and negotiate a labor agreement. The students hope that a contract would ensure them fair wages, mental health care insurance, better protections against gender discrimination and other benefits that faculty enjoy. This is largely in response to the trend in higher education toward casual labor , like graduate student teachers taking on some of the course load of full-time tenure-track professors.

As a scholar of labor and employment relations, I view the hunger strike from a broader perspective of national and state law. Collective bargaining in higher education and throughout the U.S. is likely to see significant change under the presidency of Donald Trump . Those changes will affect workers in universities and throughout private and public employment.

Yale and Local 33