How a Union Is Fighting for Trans Rights at University of Washington

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On May 10, Juniper Blessing, a 19-year-old trans woman, was murdered. Blessing, a University of Washington student, was doing laundry in her off-campus housing when a 31-year-old man followed her into the laundry room before disabling the security camera and killing her. The man in question had a history of stalking women around the campus, even trying to enter university buildings after them.

The community was thrust into mourning, remembering Blessing’s love for meteorology, singing, and video games such as Hollow Knight and Pokémon. Those who knew her took to social media to honor her life, and UW’s student-led trans collective, alongside with the United Auto Workers union local and numerous other campus organizations, held an open event to mourn her loss.

As for the university and its administrators, they set up a memorial scholarship in her honor a few weeks after her murder.

Since then, they have done little else.

While a horrific atrocity on its own, Blessing’s murder also marked an ugly pattern: elite university administrators consistently acting with apathy or outright hostility to the demands of students — many of them unionized academic workers — fighting discrimination, violence, and labor exploitation.

“Hanging heavily over us is the recent death of a student, Juniper Blessing, who was murdered in university housing off-campus. In addition to being heartbreaking, a lot of us were surprised at how little of a response the university really made,” Cassandra, a postdoctoral researcher at the university and an organizer with UAW Local 4121, told Trans News Network.

“I was teaching a class at the time, and I had to go in. We didn't know who the victim was at the time, and I had to go into teaching my class, wondering if it was one of my students. And so I was just really shocked and saddened when that happened.”

Starting organizing in 2004, academic workers at the University of Washington ratified their first agreement with the university, rallying under the banner of the UAW following the longstanding union’s recent expansion to protecting the rights of graduate student workers and others laboring in academia.

Since Local 4121’s founding, they’ve engaged in consistent negotiations with the University of Washington to ensure that their union contract’s protections remain up-to-date. While their contract was ratified earlier this year, administrators have also been working to undermine it, against the interests of their unionized faculty.

“UW administration has decided along with many other higher ed institutions across the country that the best way to protect us is to bend the knee to the Trump administration and keep the target off of the back of our university,” Winston, an organizer with the UAW local, told TNN.

The union represents people from all over the globe and from all walks of life. Cassandra and Winston remember that, following their attempts to get protections against caste discrimination, the university decided to take many steps backwards.

“Not only has the university refused to move on this at all, but they've also insisted that anti-discrimination protections for other categories be reduced, including medical condition, ethnic origin, membership or non-membership in a union, and political affiliation,” Cassandra said. “We're committed to negotiating in good faith to try to get the best possible agreement with the university. We often wonder if the university shares that commitment, considering that they have refused to bargain on this issue whatsoever and they remain committed to their position.”

Following last year’s national immigration restrictions, UW saw a seven percent drop in international enrollment, as many were anxious about potentially facing the violent crackdowns the Trump regime has rolled out. In April, one student on a visa was deported. The academic workers of UAW Local 4121 said in local reporting they received virtually no communication from the university at all. In response, the union organized community support and began pressuring university officials to take stronger action.

Later that same month, the Department of Justice used false accusations of antisemitism to investigate the university due to fundraising efforts for Palestine and Lebanon following Israel’s bombings and wartime escalation. Rather than standing up to this blatant intimidation, university officials expressed their intention to immediately “cooperate with the review and provide information and responses,” in an interview with Washington State Standard.

UW was previously subject to investigations for their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices (or anything a fascist federal government considers DEI), and saw immense budget cuts from the federal government to forest, wildfire, and medical research. Many students and researchers reported that they don’t know whether they’ll be able to continue studying and working in these respective fields.

This trend isn’t unique to UW. In February, Trans News Network reported on Brown University in Providence, R.I. selling out its trans students by accepting a $50 million agreement with the federal government in exchange for restricting trans people to the wrong bathroom, banning trans people from athletic events, and banning any coverage of gender affirming care for minors. There, trans students and supporters also fought back.

Similarly, Trump’s administration began investigating Smith College, a historical women’s college, in May for admitting trans women. The college previously. complied with the NCAA’s national ban on trans women in women’s sports. Last year, Harvard removed outlined protections for trans people in its student athletics handbook. Around the same time, the University of Pennsylvania made a deal with the Trump admin to ban trans students from its athletics.

In many of the same bargaining sessions, the University of Washington has refused to even address the union’s proposals to improve trans rights on campus. Among the proposals the union has put forward include sensitivity training to prevent misgendering and unintentional outing, establishing a fund to help ease the financial burden of socially and medically transitioning on trans faculty, and to allow people to change the names on their ID badges without charging them.

According to union spokespeople, they refuse to even consider these incredibly modest steps after a trans student was horrifically murdered.

The latter proposal is especially important for the union.

“When an individual changes their name in university systems to use their chosen name, they should be given a replacement ID badge. This is a necessary piece of work equipment that you have to have. This is not a choice,” Winston told TNN. “You have to have it to get into your building. They should [have] provided that piece of work equipment for free, but the university requires us to pay for a replacement on top of the fact that we've just paid over $300 for our name change in Washington State.”

“When we talk about this, they mention that we're asking for special treatment or carve-outs. It's not a position that we want to ever take to say this doesn't just apply to trans people, because we want this movement to be specifically about trans liberation and to show that trans people have power to make change like this happen. But even when we say to the admin at the bargaining table that this could be for anyone who changes their name, it doesn't change their talking points. It doesn't change their mind.”

“So that really just goes to show that it has nothing to do with the proposal itself, and it has more to do with their stance that they are trying to prevent the word ‘transgender’ from being in the contract at all. It's just a part of their bigger stance to rollback discrimination protections.”

As of early September, the union was still awaiting a counterproposal from the university.

Rallying for Their Rights

Following the university’s failure to communicate, in July UAW Local 4121 held a public rally calling for equity with their marginalized members. In no uncertain terms, this rally included support for trans workers, and for the university to respond and treat their demands fairly.

Hundreds of people attended, aiming to empower both participants and passerbys to take action and pressure the University of Washington to actually support marginalized groups.

The event had some partial success.

“After we held that rally, we were able to get admin to make a little bit of movement on some of the specific protected categories, like medical condition and ethnic origin, but not caste. We're trying to leverage different arms of power and really show people that Seattle is a city that [takes] this issue seriously,” Winston said.

While the organizers have been waiting for a response from the university, they’ve been busy in many other ways.

“We are considering our options. We are currently in the lead up to a vote to potentially authorize a strike, and, as a union, as a group of workers at the university, I think we are committed to doing what it takes to get a fair contract,” Cassandra said.

Emphasizing the role the public can play, and the broader trans community in Seattle, has been a particular focus for the union as well.

“What we've been really working on a lot is trying to build power within the community to show UW that this is an issue that really matters to people in Seattle. This is a city that is supposed to be a sanctuary city where trans people from red states all across the country are fleeing to move here. We are not a small voiceless minority in this city, and so we're trying to use that voice,” Winston emphasized.

Winston further made note of the contrast in views that the public has about trans rights in Seattle versus elsewhere in the country. Many see “blue sanctuary states” as a place relatively free of abuses against trans rights, in spite of this being very far from the truth.

“I'm not from Seattle. I'm originally from Nevada, and when I talk to people [outside the area] about the work that we're doing at UW, I think that a lot of folks are surprised because they think that because Seattle is such a progressive city that UW is a progressive institution by default,” he said. “People are maybe not necessarily realizing that Seattle, UW, [along with many other] institutions do this outward projection of being an LGBT friendly institution, but when we're holding them to task to protect trans workers in actionable ways they don't seem to do that.”

“Maybe that's less of a surprise to us but when I'm having these conversations with people who are outside of the Seattle community… I think that there's that conflation between Seattle as a progressive city and UW as a progressive institution and it's just not the case.”

They’re both also looking heavily towards the future, and are in particular hoping to give an organizing model for folk beyond their campus.

“Now is a time for experimentation in terms of how we can win better rights as a community. I think unionizing is one such way that has this untapped potential and so I see what we're doing as both important for ourselves and for future researchers at the University of Washington generally, and also I see it as an experiment in how we can make gains as a [broader trans] community, because I think we desperately need to find more ways to do that,” Cassandra said.

Both organizers offered multiple ways for people outside the university to help their effort. In addition to keeping eyes on their group for local rallies that people could participate in, they also offer a way for people to email UW and tell the university to support trans workers. Additionally, they also advise people interested in starting a union to contact the Emergency Worker Organizing Committee for guidance in setting one up.

Campus organizing, including on the labor front, is becoming an increasingly widespread phenomena. In the past few years, over 400 student groups at universities organized chapters with Students for Justice in Palestine, with numerous protests putting the pressure on their respective universities to support their students and oppose Trump’s crackdowns. Columbia University recently saw a protest of over 70 people gathering to support Palestinians. Other organizations, such as Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine Network, have put out open calls for solidarity and for more organizing to be done in response to this growing movement.

This has extended to other issues as well. This year, tenants unions saw an incredible rise across the country’s universities, going as far as to reach student campus housing in Appalachia. In 2023, the University of California – Berkeley’s Labor Center reported a historic rise in campus unions and strikes.

California State University saw over 15,000 students push for unionization. This year, Portland Community College saw two separate unions representing 2,300 educators and staff workers successfully strike and win higher wages. Similarly, medical workers at the University of Vermont went on strike in solidarity with immigrants, achieving mass community support and awareness. They, too, were victorious.

On the trans rights front, this year saw students at Western Carolina University’s trans students’ union hold a successful event showing support with the broader community. In 2023, the University of Louisville’s Trans Rights Alliance had a notable campus protest. Outside of universities, since 2025, healthcare workers across the country have been organizing in support of trans rights following Trump’s cuts to their livelihoods.

All these showcase that these are heavily overlapping issues. There is no world where trans rights and immigrant rights, or trans rights and unionization can be seen as truly distinct from one another. Many trans people are immigrants, many are exploited workers, many are living in precarious housing situations. We are an overwhelmingly working class demographic.

Union efforts show that not only can people on the ground raise awareness of these issues, but they can collectively organize to deal with them, especially when unions take an expansive approach to worker’s rights

Unions are about representing each of the workers, tenants, or students in a given environment, providing them with a voice and a means to work together to ensure that they’re protected through their own organizing and solidarity. The efforts of UAW Local 4121, as well as many other unions across the country, are a testament to how solidarity for one is solidarity for all. It’s an approach many other organizations, including unions that take a less intersectional tack, could learn from.

Actions like this are a prime example of ways that people can prioritize organizing and make a meaningful difference in the world around them. Change can’t happen if it doesn’t start locally, and working with existing labor organizations that are willing to encourage innovative tactics can be a fantastic way to ensure that trans rights are fought for in every avenue of life.

After all, trans workers getting better pay through a union contract is a very limited win if the systemic violence they face on and off the clock isn’t stopped. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Edited by David Forbes