This editorial originally appeared on LinkedIn.

I have studied workplace bullying for nearly twenty years. That research has taught me something that is both simple and sobering: when bullying occurs within a significant power differential, people can lose far more than a comfortable work environment. They can lose their peace of mind, their health, their careers, and sometimes the stability of their families.

And bullying does not always happen one person at a time.

Workplace mobbing occurs when multiple people participate in targeting, isolating, undermining, or discrediting someone. When those involved possess organizational or social power, the consequences can be devastating.

Women and people from historically marginalized groups are particularly vulnerable to psychological and emotional mistreatment at work because they are more likely to occupy positions with diminished organizational power. My own research has also examined colorism and workplace bullying, finding statistically significant differences in experiences based on skin tone and gender.

I understand this personally.

I am a Black woman over forty. I am not fair-complected. And I have spent more than 32 years in higher education.

Those intersecting identities matter.

They help me understand why, at different points in my career, some people have resisted supervision from me as a Black woman. They help explain why considerable experience and accomplishment do not always prevent someone from being pigeonholed, marginalized, or subjected to institutional mistreatment.

Like many Black women, I have sometimes found myself fighting those battles largely alone.

This summer, I joined SEIU.

What I have found has been refreshingly different: an inclusive space where people are encouraged to contribute. When I raise my hand and offer my talents, I am not brushed aside. When I recognize a colleague for work well done, that recognition is welcomed rather than viewed with suspicion. People understand that another person's strength does not diminish their own.

Most importantly, I am learning what it means to move from individual vulnerability to collective power.

That idea has deep roots in the struggle for civil rights. Near the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. increasingly connected racial justice with economic justice and workers' rights. He was in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated.

There is a lesson in that history.

All of us have vulnerabilities. We hope our employers and institutions will never exploit them. But hope alone is not a workplace protection strategy.

For me, joining a union is one of many steps toward creating a safer, more equitable workplace.

I have admired the Rutgers faculty union movement for years. I have attended AAUP trainings and retreats. And I have watched faculty organizing demonstrate what becomes possible when people recognize that workplace dignity should not depend entirely upon the benevolence of those who hold more power.

We are stronger together.

That principle feels particularly important now.

Higher education is facing extraordinary pressure: attacks on DEI, uncertainty around research funding, threats affecting international students and faculty, budget cuts, declining enrollment, program closures, and continuing questions about academic freedom and shared governance.

During moments like these, institutional decisions can move quickly. Individual faculty members can easily become afterthoughts.

A union creates a counterweight.

It cannot solve every problem. It cannot eliminate disagreement, institutional politics, or human frailty. But collective representation can help create accountability, due process, transparency, and balance where unequal power might otherwise prevail.

After nearly twenty years of studying workplace bullying, I have come to believe something even more strongly:

No one should have to fight workplace abuse alone.

That is why I joined the union.