“In solidarity”: Campus community organizing as an ethics of care practice (2021)

In spring 2021, labor organizers representing Alabama-based Amazon warehouse workers were handed a crushing blow when the majority of the workers voted against unionization. Higher education, however, seems to be trending in the opposite direction. College and university union membership has grown during the 2010s. Between 2013-2019, 118 new unions, representing 36,000 public and private professors, found homes on campuses across the United States. At private universities, participation grew 81 percent, which was largely driven by adjunct faculty. Alongside full-time and part-time faculty participation, higher education saw 16 new graduate employee unions develop to represent more than 19,500 grad student workers during this time.The first conceptual goal for this work is to add to the under-studied areas of ethics of care and labor activism in public relations literature, in addition to exploring the intersection of these two topics. The second goal is to develop ethics of care driven strategies for labor activists and organizations.