A combination of destructive trends in higher education--shrinking state budgets, stagnant student aid, the growth of corporate-style management, the overuse and exploitation of contingent faculty, increasing workloads and attacks on academic freedom--is weakening the educational integrity and professionalism of American colleges and universities. About three-quarters of the instructional workforce today is made up of contingent faculty who teach more than half of all undergraduate courses in the United States. Combined, these trends have placed the higher education workforce under siege. Faculty and staff cannot afford to allow those who want to impose corporate-style management on higher education to sow discord by pitting various segments of the campus workforce against one another. They may attract allies in the administration and among policy-makers. But in the first instance, only their unions have the power, the structure and the will to take a stand to ensure a higher education workforce that is built on good, stable and secure jobs, and on the concept of equal pay for equal work. They need to do what unions are designed to do best: use their collective power to improve working conditions for everyone, particularly for those who are most exploited.