After Penn State faculty unionized, will staff members be next? This group hopes so
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- Penn State Professionals United has organized since late 2025 to represent about 6,000.
- The group cites planned campus closures, opaque decision making, and benefits concerns.
- The organization is building outreach toward a supermajority before any unionization vote.
In the wake of Penn State faculty unionizing, another group is working to organize non-faculty professional staff across all of the university’s campuses.
Penn State Professionals United, a group seeking to unionize non-faculty professional staff classified by the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board — such as research and development engineers, marketing and communications staff, IT employees and others — has been organizing since late 2025.
They aim to create a bargaining unit representing about 6,000 employees within 880 job titles across University Park and commonwealth campuses, according to Keith Hickey, a marketing communications specialist at Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and a member of the group’s organizing committee.
“These voices haven’t been listened to by the university, they haven’t been involved in the decision-making process, and so we’re making it a point of emphasis that we reach them, that we hear them, and we lift up these voices,” Hickey said.
Teamsters Local 8, which represents Penn State’s technical service workers, sought last year to expand its bargaining unit to include a portion of employees now part of Penn State Professionals United. The effort was unsuccessful after the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board classified those employees as a separate professional group, local union president Jon Light said.
But there is still some collaboration between the two, he added.
“Our lead organizer from the IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters), Scott Bush, has met with them a couple of times, so there is some collaboration going on,” Light said. “They’re doing their thing, they’re organizing; we’re doing our organizing.”
The group is now represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which includes more than 130,000 higher education members in over 30 states.
The effort grew out of apprehension toward planned campus closures, transparency in university decision-making, living costs and the lack of an independent grievance process, Hickey said. Some of those concerns were also shared by the Penn State Faculty Alliance, which organized thousands of professors and faculty members who voted in May in favor of unionization.
Other motivators for staff members involved in Penn State Professionals United include parking fees, which for Hickey is one example that intersects several key issues.
“I find it kind of ridiculous that we have to pay to park to come into work,” he said. “The cost of living in State College is really high, and a lot of people who work for Penn State can’t afford to live in the town where we work.”
Other key issues for the group include higher tuition benefits where employees receive 100% instead of 75% in tuition reimbursement, which Hickey said is what employees in other Pennsylvania State Systems of Higher Education that are represented by AFSCME receive. They are aiming to devise a contract that incorporates these key issues.
Penn State did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Penn State Professionals United is now focused on deepening support and gathering concerns to build a supermajority before a potential vote, Hickey said.
“We want to build a supermajority, we want to make sure that this is something that everyone is bought into, that this is something that is more than just 50% plus one, and that this is overwhelmingly popular with the people who work here,” he said.
The organization is conducting outreach campaigns that focus on one-on-one conversations with employees, including about 4,600 at University Park, Hickey said.
“We’re going to people’s houses, we’re talking to people in the workplace, we’re getting close to 1,000 employees that we’ve had conversations with, and that’s going up every day as we continue,” he said.
Hickey said there is no clear timeline for when the organization could advance to a unionization vote. Outreach and consensus building efforts remain top priority, and the group plans to host two open houses at its office at 204 E. Calder Way, Suite 200, at 10 a.m. Saturday and another at 10 a.m. July 11.
