About

Student Union (USE)

A Student... Union?!

For us, students, injustices and social barriers are a reality: rising education fees, first year's failure rates up to at least 50%, housing prices escalating, internships' exploitation, increasing use of precarious jobs in order to finance our education…

When you find yourself in a lecture hall with more than a hundred strangers, when you have to deal with an unknown administration, when you end up abandoned at your job, you experience the atomization of students. Taking action against university authorities, employers or teachers isn't easy on your own!

A union is a solidarity organization that prevents us from suffering from isolation: it is a way to act collectively, on the scale of an establishment, a city, a country and across the world.

Why should you unionize and campaign with the Student Union?

A union defending students' interests

The Student Union (USE) is a student union struggling for an education allowing access and success to all : a democratized education. For that reason, we struggle against precariousness, social selection, and education merchandising. We defend projects improving students' quality of life and study : a social revenue for all students (a student salary) ; knowledge and teaching methods built democratically by all ; a public, free, independent, critical education of quality, suited for every person benefiting from it.

A combative and independent union

Co-managing universities together with the managers imbued with neoliberalism! The USE considers that improving our living, working and studying conditions result from our collective action and power balance vis-a-vis school management and governments. We do not want to be good representatives, we want to promote organization of gatherings, occupations and student strikes, enabling us to our demand more strongly. We defend our total political and financial independence to maintain our free and combative organization.

A democratic and self-managed union

The USE is a union where everyone is allowed to express their opinion and decide the orientations of the organization. Those who control the union are the students who build it day after day. We strive to promote a democracy as direct as possible in all struggles, by organizing student assemblies, sovereign in their actions and demands, to best reflect the real demands of students.

A union united with workers

We claim that students are workers in training, no matter their political, philosophical or religious tendencies. The alliance of workers and students has already proved its strength. Today, in the face of so many austerity attacks, it is indispensible! To better fight algonside the workers, with or without a job, with or without documents, we are a part of the workers' organization. For that reason, we are members of the Young FGTB.

Want to unionize and/or become a delegate in your school?

You want to go further : become a delegate, share your experience and develop a common action with other delegates? You just have to meet us or register on our website. If there is no section in your school yet, we can help you create a local union to weigh on education politics.

Want to discover more about what we stand for? Read our charter, our statutes...

Unfortunately, none of the following texts are translated yet. You want to help us to translate them? Contact us.

You want to know more about unionizing?

Unfortunately, none of the following texts are translated yet. You want to help us translate them? Contact us.

  1. USE is a member section of the Student central of Jeunes FGTB.
  2. Therefore, USE respects the intern structures of Jeunes FGTB and its Student central.
  3. USE's members are unionized at Jeunes FGTB, through the General Secretariat (????).
  4. Students part of Jeunes FGTB unionized freely (as in free beer) and freely (as in free speech) will never be forced to join USE, whether they are students from higher education or not.
  5. USE has a total political autonomy when it comes to higher education.