Less than two years after its formation, the Third World Labor Organization is disbanding due to “systematically poor turnout,” the union’s leaders wrote in a Tuesday morning email to members that was reviewed by The Herald.
The labor union represents about 50 student workers at the Brown Center for Students of Color who announced plans to unionize in February 2024. At the time, TWLO organizers cited a desire to “protect the center from censorship,” defend freedom of expression, “ensure Brown values the work of students of color” and “uphold the political legacy of the Third World Center,” the BCSC’s predecessor.
But in recent months, low member participation and stalled bargaining with the University left few paths forward for the University’s smallest student labor union, according to organizers.
“Over the past 20 months, members committed to bargaining, meeting and completing tasks have significantly dwindled,” the Tuesday email read.
Following an “emergency meeting” in early October, members “agreed that we needed to communicate, complete responsibilities and attend meetings,” organizers wrote in the email. But, they added, “This never meaningfully improved.”
In early November, organizers told union members that at least 10 members needed to attend the next two union meetings, but this request similarly went unmet, union leaders noted in their email.
The lack of attendance “makes this union not member-led and thus not sustainable,” organizers wrote. “The union only runs if we make it run.”
“The difficulty came with just being able to find workers who were ready to consistently step up and bargain this contract,” Local 6516 Executive Director Michael Ziegler GS told The Herald. The union was one of five bargaining units at the University represented by the Graduate Labor Organization-led RIFT-AFT Local 6516.
Contract negotiations between TWLO union leaders and University administrators had also stalled in recent months, Ziegler added. In the email to members, student organizers wrote that the union had “faced disorganization, bad-faith bargaining and union-hostility from BCSC supervisors and Brown administrators” since its formation in February 2024.
In an email to The Herald, University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote that until Tuesday, “Brown’s team had not heard from TWLO or their union representative since the first week of July.” The most recent bargaining session between Brown and TWLO took place in late spring of 2025.
Since May, the University has not received “responses or counter proposals from the union” and TWLO organizers canceled several June bargaining sessions “on short notice,” Clark added.
Clark wrote that the University’s negotiating team “has been consistently respectful, responsive, flexible with its time and open to working with TWLO’s representatives.” He added that Brown “shared detailed information with the union in response to requests, responded to all contract articles that were in the process of being bargained” and upheld a “commitment to a fair and transparent negotiation process.”
Last spring, University negotiators rejected the union’s contract proposals that sought to guarantee student worker input in BCSC’s programming decisions and protect workers’ speech in such programming. The rejection of these proposals marked a departure from what organizers described as the University’s previous willingness to negotiate, The Herald reported.
The Herald reached out to several TWLO members for comment on the announcement of the union’s disbandment and did not receive any responses.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Ethan Schenker is a university news editor covering staff and student labor. He is from Bethesda, MD, and plans to study International and Public Affairs and Economics. In his free time, he enjoys playing piano and clicking on New York Times notifications.
