Hannah Kim and Natalia Piland are not your typical labor organizers. Kim, 23, has a bleached mullet, and when we met at a cafe near campus last Friday, she was wearing baggy track pants and chunky dad shoes. Piland, 29, was wearing all black, other than an iridescent fanny pack. Both of them are graduate students at the University of Chicago.

It’s the final week of classes, but the two women have not been consumed with schoolwork. Instead, they’ve been busy organizing their peers to fight for better work conditions: On Monday, many UChicago graduate students participated in a three-day walkout, refusing to teach or grade papers.

“What is a way for graduates to actually have power and to actually be able to push what we want our work place to look like?” Piland said. “The union is the only way that seems feasible.”

These women, both members of Graduate Students United at UChicago, are among the new faces of unionization in America. They’re organizing what were once stable, middle class professions, which have seen wages and benefits erode precisely as positions opened up to women and minority candidates.

The University of Chicago is the largest employer on the south side of the city. Graduate students are included in that statistic, but the university disputes their status as workers, which remains ambiguous in federal law. Graduate students at public universities have long been considered workers, and many are unionized, including those in the CUNY and University of California systems. Graduate students at private universities are also considered workers, thanks to a 2016 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board. But the board, which now tilts Republican under President Trump, is revisiting the ruling and expected to reverse it.