The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions (National Center) is a national labor-management research center housed in and supported by Hunter College, City University of New York.
Learn More About the National CenterThe National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, Hunter College, City University of New York, invites proposals for balanced and diverse labor-management panels and interactive workshops for our 53rd annual conference that will take place on March 22-24, 2026, in New York City.
The theme of the conference will be Uniting for Political and Workplace Democracy.
The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions is pleased to announce its new Contract Research Site, an annual contribution-based platform.
This unique Site will be valuable to negotiators, union representatives, administrators, law firms, and others involved in or studying higher education collective bargaining.
It includes a search engine to research the terms of hundreds of collective bargaining agreements in higher education. It will also provide filters to permit research by institution, institution type, unit type, bargaining agent, sector, and state.
Access to the Site will require a registration and an annual contribution to the National Center in the amounts set forth below. The contribution will permit a set number of identified individual users to use the Site. A contributor will also be entitled to be listed as a sponsor of our annual conference.
The Site will become live on October 1, 2025 for those entities that have registered and made the contribution. Keep a step ahead in negotiations and in your research by registering for the Contract Research Site today.
To help celebrate the National Center’s 53rd annual conference, we encourage higher education institutions, unions, law firms, and companies to become a sponsor of our 2026 annual conference. For sponsorship information, refer to our Sponsorship Opportunities document.
Through a conference sponsorship you will demonstrate support for the National Center’s continuing labor-management mission and research agenda.
Another important way to celebrate the National Center’s 53rd annual conference and demonstrate support for our mission and research is for your institution, union, law firm, organization or company to place an advertisement in the conference program. For more information on ad placement, refer to our Ad Order form.
Please email us with any questions at: msavares@hunter.cuny.edu.
The National Center is pleased to announce its latest publication: Anti-Discrimination Clauses in Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreements. The study is based on research that led to the publication in September of our 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Higher Education. The purpose of this study is to assist negotiators, labor representatives, and administrators in developing, amending, and implementing anti-bias contract provisions.
The study includes excerpted anti-discrimination text from 30 collective bargaining agreements negotiated by different nationally-affiliated unions and institutions at all levels of higher education from across the country involving tenured and tenure track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers, and graduate student employees. For each contract, the monograph includes the contract's anti-discrimination clause and the relevant negotiated procedure concerning enforcement when the contract does not permit, limits, or modifies the use of the standard grievance-arbitration procedure to enforce the anti-discrimination clause. In addition, the monograph includes a hyperlink to each contract to permit the contextualization of the excerpted provisions within the terms of the entire agreement.
Download the Report on Anti-Discrimination Clauses
Order a Hard Copy of the Report
Download the Publication Copy
Collective bargaining offers unions and institutions of higher education a mechanism for establishing comprehensive, legally binding anti-discrimination provisions. In contrast to aspirational declarations, negotiated contracts can manifest concrete commitments to equitable practices and equal opportunity. This important new study by the National Center provides valuable insights into this domain. The research highlights exemplary and innovative contractual language addressing discrimination, as well as other collaborative approaches undertaken by unions and administrators to combat discriminatory practices in academic settings. The study's findings are particularly relevant in the current sociopolitical climate, where diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on college campuses face increasing scrutiny and opposition. By codifying anti-discrimination measures within collective bargaining agreements, institutions and unions can establish a robust framework for maintaining equitable practices, even in the face of external pressures.
— Ana Avendaño, Visiting Associate Professor of Law, CUNY School of Law
Anti-Discrimination Clauses in Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreements will be an extremely powerful bargaining tool in pursuit of well-tailored examples of anti-discrimination contract provisions relevant to particular workplaces. The contractual anti-discrimination provisions concretely and efficiently presented in this work will carve out joint union-employer commitments to rid workplaces of arbitrary and pernicious discrimination. Picking up where legislatures leave off, these clauses will help unions and institutions build upon state and federal legislative foundations of justice. I cannot recommend this work highly enough.
— Michael C. Duff, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law and co-director of the Wefel Center for Employment Law
Drawing on the treasure trove of the National Center’s 2024 repository of collective bargaining agreements, this monograph provides tools for both unions and employers in higher education. It is an excellent resource for negotiating provisions aimed at preventing, eliminating, and remedying employment discrimination in colleges and universities. With its many examples of contract provisions, the monograph can be used by negotiators to go above and beyond statutory minimums to create a collective bargaining agreement that advances towards the goal of inclusive, fair, and just institutions of higher education.
— Risa L. Lieberwitz, Professor of Labor and Employment Law, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
The National Center is pleased to announce the publication of the 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Higher Education on the scope of higher education unionization involving faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate and undergraduate student employees. The 2024 Directory includes data and analysis concerning over 900 collective bargaining relationships in higher education through January 1, 2024, and hyperlinks to 813 recent contracts in higher education.
Download the 2024 Directory
Download the Hard Copy of the 2024 Directory
The 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education is an invaluable resource for the field. At the Delphi Project, we have found data to be one of the most important levers for change. Change agents will now have access to data for over 900 collective bargaining relationships and 813 contracts that shed light on ways to improve the working conditions in higher education. The analysis in the 2024 Directory demonstrates the growth of unions by region, institutional type and employee category. The growth of non-tenure track faculty, postdocs, academic researchers, graduate and undergraduate students shows how unionization is becoming a tactic of choice for change.
— Adrianna Kezar, Professor and Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education and the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success, University of Southern California
This comprehensive and timely report and update on developments in collective bargaining in higher education provides a treasure trove of data and an inventory of contracts that will serve as invaluable resources to researchers and practitioners working in this sector. Bravo to the army it took to collect, assemble, summarize, and make available all these useful data.
— Thomas A. Kochan, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management and Institute for Work and Employment Research
The first step towards better labor conditions in academia is knowing the labor conditions of academia. By collecting a broad swath of the collective bargaining agreements that cover academic employees today, the National Center’s 2024 Directory sets us on the right path. The 2024 Directory’s painstakingly gathered yet highly accessible data is an invaluable resource for everyone interested in learning more about employment relationships in academia, from the campus organizer to the scholar of higher education to the parent or legislator.
— Deepa Das Acevedo, JD, PhD, Associate Professor of Law, Emory University