At the end of January, graduate students at Temple University — a school with about 10,000 graduate students — took to the street to peacefully demand better benefits. Their efforts were met with increasing resistance from the university, which withheld tuition and health care benefits for about 100 graduate students on strike.

The PLRB certified the Pitt faculty union’s landslide election victory one year ago as of Friday. Since then, faculty have changed from advisors in a shared governance system to legal equals in slow and, at times, publicly bitter contract talks with administration. The very existence of negotiations, however strained, gives Melinda Ciccocioppo “a real sense of serenity.”

More than 150 faculty members showed up today, with signs and in song, on the steps of Posvar Hall to demand one thing — a fair contract.

President Joe Biden complimented unions and called out “extreme MAGA Republicans” for putting democracy at stake to a crowd of about 100 members of a local United Steelworkers union in West Mifflin on Monday.

Workers at the Amos Hall Starbucks unionized Friday in a 10-3 vote. Following the NLRB’s certification of the results, the union can elect a bargaining committee and begin contract negotiations with company representatives.

When Sam Knapp, a shift supervisor at the Amos Hall Starbucks, saw that his employees’ wellness was deteriorating, he decided to take action and sent a message to Workers United.

The National Labor Relations Board will mail ballots this Thursday to Starbucks employees deciding whether to unionize the coffee chain’s Amos Hall location on Pitt’s campus. The board will then count the ballots on May 6.

A crowd of over 50 people gathered Sunday at the Coffee Tree Roasters location in Shadyside to show their support for employee unionization efforts a day before the union vote.

Unionization would give Pitt faculty the ability to collectively bargain and advocate for improving pay, health policies, job security, workload and transparency from administrators — issues that have become glaring in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a yearslong campaign, Pitt faculty will vote on whether to unionize beginning next month, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations board ruled Friday.