New issue launch Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor #35 (2024-2025)
Articles in Workplace #35 address a variety of labour issues on campus and beyond, including the first in a series of articles by graduate student participants in the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Find the Workplace #35 here: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/index
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Contingent labor, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Publications, Research, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged global labor supply, Global Labour Research Centre Symposium, migration
From The Tyee:
Faculty Take Strike Vote at University of Northern British Columbia
Salaries a sticking point in pricey northern city.
By Katie Hyslop
The University of Northern British Columbia’s faculty association made history Jan. 15 when it became the first faculty union at a B.C. research university to take a strike vote. The vote passed with 84.8 per cent in favour of a strike, giving faculty members 90 days to take strike action.
The university, located in Prince George, has been bargaining with the faculty association for eight months, the last three with help from British Columbia Labour Board-appointed mediator Trevor Sones.
About 70 per cent of bargaining issues at UNBC have been settled, but faculty association president Jacqueline Holler says a major impasse is faculty salaries, which are as much as 24 per cent lower than salaries at similar-sized Canadian universities.
“What the employer has offered in terms of compensation does absolutely nothing to address the situation,” said Holler. Neither she nor UNBC would disclose specifics of offers on the bargaining table.
Holler said another reason faculty deserves higher pay is the university’s frequent ranking by Maclean’s magazine as one of the top three primarily undergraduate universities in Canada.
But UNBC says there are a number of factors affecting salary negotiations: Government requirements for wages to stay within fixed financial parametres; an overall decline in enrollment; an increase in the number of B.C. universities; and increased government support for trades training.
“I’m not citing those [factors] as the most important, only to suggest that there’s a number of factors that are all at play,” said Rob van Adrichem, UNBC’s vice president of external communications. “And it all affects this situation.”
Unionized last April
The vote comes after UNBC’s faculty association, representing close to 500 full and part-time instructors, became a union last April. The faculty associations at Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria unionized around the same time.
There are six research universities in British Columbia. They include UNBC, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, Thompson Rivers University, Royal Roads University, and the University of British Columbia.
The faculty association at the University of British Columbia became the first B.C. research university to unionize in the 1980s. In exchange for the university’s support the union gave up their right to strike. Almost 20 years later Royal Roads University’s faculty association officially became a union. Faculty at Thompson Rivers University is also unionized.
With the exception of Alberta, where law prevents university faculty associations from becoming unions, there are only four non-unionized public university faculty associations in Canada. They are at McGill, Waterloo, University of Toronto, and McMaster.
Salary disputes were the common denominator between Simon Fraser, University of Victoria, and UNBC faculty associations’ decision to unionize, says Michael Conlon, executive director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia, an umbrella organization for research university faculty associations.
“I think it’s fair to say that salary increases at all the research universities in B.C. have not kept up” with the rest of Canada, Conlon said.
Attracting highly educated academics is a good reason to increase salaries, says Conlon, adding competition for “internationally renowned-faculty” is stiff both nationally and internationally.
“As B.C.’s pay scale falls farther and farther behind, I think it will be a challenge to recruit and retain the best researchers, the best teachers, and the best faculty,” he said. “I think that’s a challenge for the entire province in ensuring we’ve got a competitive and excellent system of post-secondary education.”
The faculty’s previous contract expired last June, four months after arbitrator Vince Ready released a final decision on a 2012-2014 contract, which included two retroactive pay raises of 2.5 per cent.
Ready agreed with the faculty association that salaries were low compared to other similar-sized universities, and said UNBC did have the money to raise the pay of faculty members.
Bargaining continues this weekend
But while the wage increase helped, Holler says it didn’t fix UNBC’s “broken” salary structure and was negated by similar wage increases at other B.C. universities.
Holler said living in the north is more expensive than southern B.C., a factor not taken into account when deciding faculty wages.
“In most fields if you work in the north you actually get paid a little more because they understand that it’s hard to attract people,” she said.
The faculty association still hopes to reach an agreement through bargaining, and has yet to meet to discuss strike options. UNBC undergraduate classes end April 17, two days after the strike deadline.
UNBC’s van Adrichem says the strike vote itself doesn’t have an impact on the bargaining process. “The university has been and is very keen to negotiate an agreement,” he said.
Both sides are scheduled to return to the bargaining table on Jan. 30 until Feb. 1. [Tyee]
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged British Columbia, Canada, compensations, Faculty salaries, faculty unions, post-secondary education, Salaries, Strikes, Unions, University of Northern British Columbia
CBC, October 12, 2014– Hong Kong police began on Monday to remove barricades erected by pro-democracy protesters who have occupied several sites around the Chinese-controlled city for two weeks, according to protest group Occupy Central.
At the main protest site, around government offices in the downtown district of Admiralty, scores of student protesters faced off with police who were massing in the area, a Reuters witness said. The Hong Kong government has said the demonstrations are illegal.
On Saturday, student leaders issued an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging him to consider political reforms in the city and blaming the city’s unpopular leader for the demonstrations.
The letter, issued by two student groups leading the protests, said Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was responsible for a civil disobedience campaign that has seen tens of thousands of people throng the semi-autonomous city’s key thoroughfares over the past two weeks.
Thousands of demonstrators showed up in the main protest zone on Saturday, two days after Hong Kong’s government called off scheduled negotiations with students who are demanding voters have a greater say in choosing the city’s leader in 2017 elections.
The protesters have vowed to keep up the demonstrations until the government responds to their demands.
“Students walked out of classes and are occupying different places now because Leung and others have repeatedly ignored what the people want,” the letter read. “If the central government is confident, it should not be afraid to let Hong Kong people elect their own chief executive.”
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Friday that he was confident Hong Kong’s government can preserve “social stability.” He did not directly mention the protests, but stressed that Beijing won’t change its “one country, two systems” approach to running Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, a Chinese state-run newspaper blamed the United States for being behind the protests — a claim the U.S. State Department strongly rejected.
Read More: CBC
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Human Rights, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Students
Daniel Schearf, Voice of America, October 12, 2014– Pro-democracy protest leaders in Hong Kong have vowed to continue their occupation of city streets after the Chinese territory’s leader soundly rejected their demands. Hong Kong’s chief executive also called their movement “out of control” and said it could not last very long.
Protesters Sunday voiced defiance after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said there was ‘zero chance’ of meeting their demands.
In an interview with TVB, Hong Kong’s Beijing-approved leader said China would never rescind its decision against open nomination of candidates for the chief executive post.
Leung also dismissed protester demands that he resign for allegedly failing to uphold Hong Kong’s constitution, the Basic Law.
Criticizes decision
Lester Shum, deputy secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and a protest leader, said, “What C.Y. Leung, the chief executive, said, showed that the Hong Kong government still refuse to take the responsibility to face the political issue made by, or caused by, the Hong Kong government.”
Hong Kong is to hold a much anticipated first direct election for chief executive in 2017 as part of the Chinese territory’s unique “One Country, Two Systems” status.
But China’s National People’s Congress in August set out a plan that allows Beijing-leaning officials in Hong Kong to choose the candidates the public would be allowed to vote on.
The limitation on the former British colony’s democracy sparked students to boycott classes and lead the occupation of city streets, now in its third week.
Talks canceled
The number of protesters had declined in recent days, but got a boost Friday night when thousands answered a call to rally at the main demonstration site next to government offices.
Authorities had canceled a dialogue on constitutional reform with protest leaders Friday after calls for a new wave of civil disobedience.
Despite the boost, Shum acknowledged they are struggling to maintain the momentum of the movement as it is challenged by those disturbed by the barricaded streets.
“Yeah, I believe this movement has come to face a very difficult problem,” Shum said.
“It’s that … the government use every tactics to wish to delay our movement, to wish us to come home or give up our occupation. So, what we are going to do, or what we are facing is how we can convince the Hong Kong citizens and students to support us, to still support this occupation movement,” he said.
Groups of people opposed to the occupation, including taxi and truck drivers, have demonstrated against it. There are also sporadic arguments and fights with protesters.
Protesters add tents
Nonetheless, demonstrators over the weekend added new tents to the streets around government offices in a show of defiance and determination to develop a genuine democracy.
The protest became known as the “umbrella revolution” after protesters used umbrellas to peacefully defend themselves against police tear gas and pepper spray.
People hung notes of support shaped like umbrellas to a large, wire sculpture of an umbrella and added post-it notes to those already plastered on a nearby wall.
Frankie Lam, who brought his two children to see the demonstration, said Hong Kong authorities should stop making excuses for not allowing them to directly elect their leaders.
“They can do it. Just whether they are willing to do so. So, I think, for now, the Hong Kong people will try to … cooperate with each other, to try to fight … (against) this unfair treatment,” Lam said.
When asked whether he thinks the protesters will succeed, Lam replied, “I don’t know. But, if you never ever try, you will never ever know. Just try our best to do something for our … for the next generation.”
Lam’s elementary school-aged son posted a note that read “Do Not Give Up” in Chinese characters.
Read More: VoA
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Students
Gu Qinger, Epoch Times, October 6, 2014– Preparatory talks are under way in Hong Kong between the student protesters and the government, but all signs suggest that normal life is not returning to Hong Kong anytime soon.
On Oct. 6, during the second round of preparatory talks between student representatives from the the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Ray Lau, Undersecretary of the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, both sides have agreed to have multiple rounds of discussion, with both sides on an equal footing, and with any agreement to be enforced by the government.
Yet students are wary of the officials speaking to them.
In April 2010 Ray Lau declared on the television program City Forum that Radio TV Hong Kong should play the dual roles of being the mouthpiece and supervisor of the Hong Kong government, which angered many people in Hong Kong. Radio Television Hong Kong is the public broadcaster of Hong Kong.
The voting record of Lau during his tenure as legislator of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong does not bode well for the students’ demands.
Lau voted against legislative bills on “Defending press freedom,” “Taking a positive stand on the demands by citizens participating in the July 1 march,” “Addressing the 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre,” and “Improving social stability by breaking up the monopolies.”
“To reduce violence and reduce casualties, police will take action at the appropriate moment,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said just hours before the two sides met to plan the upcoming talks. “I encourage students, bystanders and others to leave high-risk areas as soon as possible.”
One person offering an overture towards the students was Tung Chee-wha, former chief executive of Hong Kong, and vice chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee.
“You guys have left behind everything to participate in the occupying movement and fight for democracy. You have made great sacrifices,” wrote Tung in a statement entitled “A Call to Those Students and Young People by Tung Chee-hwa.”
“For students and young people who take part in the protest, we have heard your democratic demands. We have heard them loud and clear,’ wrote Tung. “We understand your unwavering quest for ideals.”
That Tung addressed himself as “we” instead of “I” suggests the Chinese authorities would share his view to some extent, according to Apple Daily. In September this year, Tung Chee-hwa led a delegation of business leaders in Hong Kong to meet with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
80 faculty members, including To Yiu-Ming, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University, issued a statement asking the government to take a step back and calm down. It asks the government to talk to the students and respond to their demands to avoid further social division on Oct. 5.
“Leung has not been willing to give in an inch. Every time there is a dialogue opportunity, something would happen, like thugs attacking peaceful protesters,” said Professor To.
Read More: Epoch Times
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Protests, Students
Eyder Peralta, NPR, October 5, 2014– Update at 10:35 a.m. ET. No Sign Of Dispersing: Watching a live feed from the Admiralty and Mong Kok areas of Hong Kong, one thing is for certain: It does not appear that protesters are going anywhere. In fact, it appears that crowds in those two areas have grown.
The South China Morning Post reports that Federation of Students secretary-general Alex Chow Yong-kang addressed the crowd this evening, saying they are preparing for talks with the government.
Chow, however, noted that their demands had not changed: The federation wants to be able to nominate whoever they want as the city’s next chief executive.
Update at 8:15 a.m. ET. Confusion:
Reporting from Hong Kong, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn says that just as some protesters announced they were leaving the area surrounding the Chief Executive’s Office, other protesters came in.
This protest, he says, has, after all, been very decentralized.
The South China Morning Post has some detail:
“As the Mong Kok protesters were divided on moving out, there was similar confusion in Admiralty as dozens of protesters re-occupied the junction of Lung Wo Road and Tim Wa Avenue (the main entrance to CY Leung’s office) just moments after the crowd voted to clear that area.
“‘We strove hard to get this site. We shouldn’t give up this site without any government decision in favour of us,’ said Ben Liu Chi-fung, 20.
“‘The chief executive’s office is an important site,’ said student Tanson Tsui. ‘I think we cannot give up the basic principle of our demonstration: to press for the government to undo the unjust electoral reform framework.’ “
Read More: NPR
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Protests, Students
CBC, October 4, 2014–Hong Kong police said Saturday that they have arrested 19 people, some of whom are believed to have organized crime ties, after mobs tried to drive pro-democracy protesters from the streets where they have held a weeklong, largely peaceful demonstration.
At least 12 people and six officers were injured during the clashes, district commander Kwok Pak-chung said at a pre-dawn press briefing. Protest leaders called off planned talks with the government on political reforms after the battles kicked off Friday afternoon in gritty, blue-collar Mong Kok, across Victoria Harbour from the activists’ main protest camp.
Police struggled for hours to control the battles as attackers pushed, shoved and jeered the protesters. Those arrested face charges of unlawful assembly, fighting in public and assault, Kwok said, adding that eight men are believed to have backgrounds involving triads, or organized crime gangs.
The protesters urged residents to join their cause and demanded that the police protect their encampments. The Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the groups leading the demonstrations that drew tens of thousands of people earlier this week, said they saw no choice but to cancel the dialogue.
“The government is demanding the streets be cleared. We call upon all Hong Kong people to immediately come to protect our positions and fight to the end,” the group said in a statement.
They demanded the government hold someone responsible for the scuffles Friday, the worst disturbances since police used tear gas and pepper spray on protesters last weekend to try to disperse them.
Hundreds of people remained in the streets early Saturday in Mong Kok, one of Hong Kong’s busiest shopping areas, after the clashes.
“Of course I’m scared, but we have to stay and support everyone,” said Michael Yipu, 28, who works in a bank.
Well after midnight, the crowds stood peacefully, occasionally chanting and shouting, while police looked on.
The standoff is the biggest challenge to Beijing’s authority since it took over the former British colony in 1997. Earlier Friday, the students had agreed to talks with the government proposed by Hong Kong’s leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. But his attempt to defuse tensions fell flat as many protesters were unhappy with his refusal to yield their demands for his resignation.
The cancellation of the talks — prompted by clashes with men who tried to tear down the makeshift barricades and tents set up by the demonstrators — left the next steps in the crisis uncertain.
It was unclear if those scuffles were spontaneous or had been organized, although some of the attackers wore blue ribbons signalling support for the mainland Chinese government, while the protesters have yellow ribbons. At least some of them were residents fed up with the inconvenience of blocked streets and closed shops, and were perhaps encouraged to take matters into their own hands by police calls for protesters to clear the streets.
Read More: CBC
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Students
Wall Street Journal, China Real Time, October 3, 2014– Toward evening on the seventh day of protests that have rocked Hong Kong, fears grew of a confrontation. Protesters were giving the city’s chief executive until midnight to resign and said they would block him from going to work; police vowed to stop them. How the next hours played out; times are approximate:
5 p.m. Thursday: Crowds swell outside the offices of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Photos on social media show police carrying supplies of rubber bullets and tear gas into the building. Students block a van from entering the compound.
6 p.m. Police spokesman Steve Hui says police is prepared to take “resolute” measures.
7 p.m. Organizers tell people with children and pets to clear the area around the chief executive’s office and the adjacent People’s Liberation Army complex. Students start donning gas masks and goggles. “I’m afraid, just hoping for the best,” says student Ashley Yeung, 22, who was at the protest on Sunday when tear gas was fired into the crowd by riot police.
8 p.m. Student leader Joshua Wong pleads for calm on Twitter: “Those we oppose are crazy. We don’t want to be mad like them.”
9 p.m. The Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the student groups leading the protests, posts an open letter on Facebook to Carrie Lam, the No. 2 official in the Hong Kong government, seeking negotiations.
Some protesters near a PLA garrison on Hong Kong island block traffic but others try to stop them, “It’s the only road Hong Kong has!” shouts one woman through a loudspeaker.
10 p.m. Crowds are now huge at the government buildings. Police again warn protesters not to charge police lines.
11 p.m. As the midnight deadline protesters have set for Mr. Leung to resign approaches, the mood is apprehensive but crowds are orderly: They have heard Mr. Leung will speak and are waiting. Periodically chants erupt when student leaders speak.
11:30 p.m. The presidents of the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong appear at the government buildings to appeal for calm.
Midnight: The word from the chief executive mere minutes before midnight: He will appoint Ms. Lam, to meet with student protesters. He won’t resign.
Early morning hours Friday: Crowds start to disperse but many stay, saying they’re far from satisfied. “What they said was so distant from what we wanted,” says 26-year old Lawrence Chak, who still plans to spend the night with his friends at the main protest site.
The leaders of Occupy Central, two college professors and a Baptist minister, welcome talks between students and the government, but say the chief executive must still step down.
As many protesters sleep on the lawns and sidewalks, others sit with textbooks on their lap, trying to catch up with their studies after days of protesting.
5 a.m. Some protesters holding red traffic sticks try to prevent others from blocking the main roads outside the government buildings as morning nears and people start going to work after a two-day holiday.
Police plead for protesters to allow through a truck they say is loaded with food for police officers. Protesters shout back that they will pass the food in: “We can give you what you need–food, not the truck.”
8:30 a.m. The Hong Kong government says the city’s government offices will be temporarily closed.
9:30 a.m. Hong Kong stocks fall 1.2% as markets open after a two-day holiday and are down around 4.6% on the week, with crowds still in the street and many government workers unable to work normally.
Read More: Wall Street Journal, China Real Time
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Human Rights, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Students
Photo by Alex Ogle/Getty
Michelle Chen, The Nation, October 1, 2014– The umbrella is a perfect icon for Hong Kong’s uprising: inclusive, aloof, a bit Anglophone and pragmatically defiant of the elements (and according to cinematic lore, readily convertible to a lethal kung fu weapon). It embodies the central plea of the protesters amassed in “Democracy Square”: a civilized demand for self-determination. Yet the biggest worry in Beijing right now isn’t the threat of universal suffrage, but what comes afterward—the struggle for social justice that Hong Kongers face they pivot between post-colonial limbo and authoritarian capitalism.
That’s the labor movement is taking to the streets with young protesters. The Equal Times reports that as of Wednesday—China’s National Day—“According to the latest HKCTU [Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions] figures, some 10,000 workers across all sectors have downed tools.” As unions representing industrial, service and professional workforces rallied alongside the youth and condemned police suppression of the demonstrators, Hong Kong labor echoed the former colony’s long legacy of worker militancy. In a call for mass strikes, the HKTCU declared, “Workers must stand up against the unjust government and violent suppression…. To defend democracy and justice, we cannot let the students fight the suppression alone.”
The immediate spark for the protests was the controversy over the electoral process. Activists were incensed that following Beijing’s decree via the proxy authority National People’s Congress, candidates for Hong Kong’s 2017 executive election would be pre-approved by the mainland authorities.
But even prior to the electoral betrayal, students revolted against the imposition of Beijing-controlled nationalist curricula on public schools. Longtime residents chafed at mainlanders’ perceived aggressive economic encroachment on local neighborhoods and businesses. And even the symbols of the protest express a yearning for a change in the social and cultural reality, rather than just liberalizing political mechanics. Like the “Hands Up” iconography of the Ferguson protests, the sea of umbrellas exude both civility and defiance in the face of brutality, not looking for trouble, just demanding dignity.
At the center of their struggle for dignity is the desire to control their economic destiny. A statement issued last week by dozens of labor and community groups draws the link between unaccountable government and the divide between the plutocracy and the people:
The Chinese Communist Party has followed and reinforced almost every governing strategy used by the British colonialists. Working in tandem, the CCP and business conglomerates have only worsened Hong Kong’s already alarming rich-poor gap. …
It is true that even a genuinely democratic system may not be able to bring immediate improvements to grassroots and workers’ livelihoods. However, the current political system and the NPC’s ruling are flagrant violations of our political rights as well as our right to be heard. A pseudo-democratic system will only install even more obstacles on our already difficult path to better livelihoods and a progressive society.
But the group’s demands go beyond electoral freedom: it wants expanded housing protections and welfare policies and a government that is responsive to the economic and social concerns raised by civil society groups. With this aspiration toward a fairer as well as freer society, according to City University of Hong Kong professor Toby Carroll, many leaders fear primarily that “people in Hong Kong will convert demands for increasing suffrage into robust demands for redistribution; that in the face of plenty, those with little or no positive prospects won’t stand for obscenely concentrated wealth, power and privilege anymore.”
As Eli Friedman points out, Hong Kong is both an amazingly sophisticated and intensely unequal economy, compared to other “developed” nations. One-fifth of the population lives in poverty. The minimum wage, just recently implemented at the rate of US $3.60, hardly offsets the astronomical costs of housing, inflation and unemployment. The former colonial trade hub has lost some 80 percent of its manufacturing jobs as industries have shifted to the mainland. The most impoverished are often migrant laborers, youths and women. The radicals at the core of #OccupyCentral represent twentysomethings who are tired of the volatility of the economy and the stagnation of the country’s political system.
Read Moore: The Nation
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Lily Kuo, Quartz, September 30, 2014– While tens of thousands of students continue to paralyze Hong Kong’s financial and commercial districts for a third day to demand free elections, across Victoria harbor in Kowloon the pro-democracy movement is starting to look a little different. In Mong Kok, a dense working class neighborhood, demonstrators are older, quieter, and in some ways, a little more cynical.
“The politics here are so bad. That’s why we have to fight for democracy,” 78-year old Li Kon-wah tells Quartz. Li says Hong Kong’s top official, the chief executive CY Leung answers only to Beijing, a government that he remembers most for having ordered a violent crackdown on nonviolent democracy protesters in 1989. “I was so angry. I cried,” he says, after carefully taping a sign onto a nearby bus that reads, “Blood bath Tiananmen Massacre.”
What started as a pro-democracy movement mainly among the city youth—sparked by student activists as well as another pro-democracy group, Occupy Hong Kong—is starting to capture a broad cross-section of the city’s population of seven million. The majority of these residents initially opposed Occupy’s strategy—to disrupt the city’s economy and force the government to withdraw electoral reforms that give Hong Kongers direct elections in 2017 but allows Beijing the ability to vet candidates for the city’s top office.
Now, news reports and footage of police clashing with students, as well as tear gassing or pepper spraying them, have brought more people into the streets. In Mong Kok, thousands of demonstrators, including students, retired local residents, and workers have overtaken Nathan Road, a main thoroughfare. They are decorating streets with chalk drawings of umbrellas—the latest symbol for the demonstrations—and plastering signs on a row of buses that had to be abandoned when drivers couldn’t move in crowds that descended on the street late Sunday.
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Human Rights, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Students
Occupy Central
Yojana Sharma, University World News, September 30, 2014– Hong Kong university students – part of a huge, often spontaneous pro-democracy movement that has occupied the streets of central Hong Kong in recent days – said on Monday that they would extend their week-long boycott of classes to an indefinite one.
“We urge students to boycott classes indefinitely and teachers to boycott teaching,” said the statement by Hong Kong University Students’ Union and Scholarism and other groups.
The week-long university strike that started on 22 September with rallies around the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, or CUHK, before spreading to central Hong Kong was to have ended on Friday 26 September with school-age students led by the campaign group Scholarism joining the strike for its final day.
Instead, huge crowds surged onto the streets at the weekend and into Monday, blocking major roads. The students and public were angry about police tactics and dozens of arrests made outside Hong Kong government headquarters, where students broke through the police cordon to occupy the area late on Friday night.
The one-week class boycott has been extended because of “violence by the police force”, said the Hong Kong Federation of Students, or HKFS, which has 60,000 members and is one of the student boycott’s largest organisers.
The boycott had been called after China last month insisted that candidates for a promised Hong Kong leadership election in 2017 would be pre-selected by representatives of China, angering pro-democracy groups. Young people are demanding genuine democracy.
HKFS and Scholarism warned that civil disobedience would spread unless Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung responds to protesters’ demands by 1 October. Possible action includes a general strike, and more class boycotts, they said.
Occupy Central co-founder Chan Kin-man said that if Leung announced his resignation, the occupation of the key areas in Hong Kong would stop for a short period of time before they decide on their next move.
But Leung said in a press conference on Tuesday that he would not give in to demands for his resignation. Any such action before ‘universal suffrage’ was implemented would mean Hong Kong picking a new leader under the existing system.
Arrests
The protests escalated after pro-democracy legislators, professors and student leaders were arrested during the police action at the government offices on Saturday morning, among them Alex Chow and Lester Shum, leaders of HKFS, three Hong Kong legislators and the convener of the Alliance for True Democracy, Joseph Cheng, a political science professor at Hong Kong’s City University.
Thousands poured onto Hong Kong’s main arteries demanding their release – in particular the release of Joshua Wong, 17, leader of Scholarism, a group of high-school students. Yvonne Leung, president of the Hong Kong University’s student union told media that Wong had been dragged away by police on Saturday morning.
Michael Davis, a professor of law at Hong Kong University, or HKU, said: “The legitimacy of the Hong Kong government is at stake and they certainly undermined their position by [tear] gassing students on the streets.
“That kind of aggressive behaviour, I think, stimulated almost half the protesters to come out,” he told local radio, describing it as a critical moment for the Hong Kong government. “They really need to be trying to do something to represent Hong Kong concerns and not just Beijing concerns.”
While Wong was held for 40 hours – the maximum allowed under Hong Kong law without charges being laid – the crowds on the streets mushroomed to over 80,000, according to HKFS estimates, with police unsuccessfully attempting to disperse them with pepper spray and teargas.
“I don’t think they [Beijing] will listen to our demands, but I am angry that the Hong Kong police treat us in this way, that is why I am here,” said a HKU law student who gave her name only as Grace. She said she had not taken part in the initial student boycotts though she had joined pro-democracy rallies through the streets of Hong Kong in early July.
While police refused to answer many questions at a press conference, they said teargas was used 87 times at nine different locations on Saturday and Sunday.
While many protesters had come prepared with goggles and face masks, most had only their umbrellas to protect them, leading to the protests being dubbed the ‘umbrella revolution’.
More than 70 people were arrested during clashes with police outside the government headquarters over the weekend, with CUHK offering legal advice to students who were arrested. HKU estimated that least 10 of its students were arrested and said it would provide legal advice and other support to the students.
In a statement, HKU’s Vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson said: “We will be flexible and reasonable in understanding the actions of students and staff who wish to express their strongly-held views.”
He added a plea for all parties to express their views peacefully and constructively. “We will also be flexible in understanding practical difficulties that staff and students may face in reaching the campus during periods of transport disruption,” the statement said.
Refusal to back down
Despite a major escalation in the protests, Chief Executive Leung – who had refused to meet with students to consider their demands – said at a press conference on Sunday that the Hong Kong government was “resolute in opposing the unlawful occupation of government buildings”. He reiterated that the Hong Kong government would uphold Beijing’s decision on elections.
A Hong Kong government statement on Sunday said the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, or China’s one-party parliament on Hong Kong’s elections, was “legally binding”.
Consultations on the Hong Kong election system had been scheduled to take place but the administration announced that these would now be held at a “better time” – a move that Occupy Central slammed as a delaying tactic. The administration was “just hoping people’s desire for genuine universal suffrage to fade over time”.
Leung issued a video-statement addressing Hong Kong citizens. He called on people to leave the protests, and dismissed rumours that police had opened fire or that the government was ready to call on China’s People’s Liberation Army to maintain order.
Commentary in the online edition of China’s communist party newspaper the People’s Daily blamed the unrest in Hong Kong on “extremists” backed by “foreign anti-China forces”. Pictures and reports of the Hong Kong unrest has been censored in China.
Read More: University World News
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Posted in Free speech, Government, Human Rights, Occupy, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Movement, Students
Tagged Free speech, Protests, Students
Brian Haman, Counterpunch, August 30, 2013 — It has become a truism in American higher education: seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by contingent faculty1, most of whom lack health insurance,2carry onerous student debt,3 receive poverty-level compensation, and often rely on public assistance such as food stamps in order to make ends meet.4 This percentage translates into more than 1.3 million highly-educated, qualified, and competent, but poorly-paid, undervalued, and underappreciated American workers. Conversely, administrative costs at colleges have soared in recent years. The academic managerial class (provosts, vice and associate vice provosts, deans, presidents, vice presidents, etc.) routinely earn six-figure salaries, often with generous perks including vacation homes.5
According to U.S. Education Department data, “U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security”.6 Most new hires on American campuses never even set foot in the classroom simply because they are not teachers but administrators.7 Furthermore, the cost of a college degree in the U.S. has increased by 1,120 percent since 1978.8 The overwhelming majority of the academic labor force (to say nothing of students, who voluntarily submit to indentured servitude in the form of student debt) suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.
We find a similar dynamic in other segments of the American labor force, especially in the fast-food industry. Fast-food workers endure low wages (and indeed wage stagnation), few if any benefits, and a scarcity of full-time contracts.9 The marginalized and contingent workforce at places such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and KFC share similar concerns and face similar challenges such as starvation wages, reliance on government assistance, and job insecurity that academic workers endure at some of our nation’s leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Michigan.10 However, unlike the academy, the difference between CEO compensation and fast-food workers’ pay is truly breathtaking. David C. Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, which includes chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut, received a total annual compensation of $29.67 million in 2012.11
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Last year, McDonald’s gave [Dan] Thompson a compensation package worth $13.8 million, or more than 558 times what McDonald’s expects employees to make — from two jobs”.12 The national minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25 per hour and the top five largest employers (McDonald’s is among them) pay its workers at or near the minimum wage. We may reiterate the conclusion of the previous paragraph with one minor revision: The overwhelming majority of the fast-food labor force suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.
When faced with such systemic and structural inequalities, how have fast-food workers responded? The answer is quite instructive. They have staged local protests and walkouts in cities across the country and are planning a national walkout in order to fight for a higher minimum wage. As Professor Anne Kalleberg has noted, however, the protests are not union-sponsored but socially organized.13 Fast-food workers, just like their academic counterparts, often struggle to unionize due, at times, to explicit efforts by their employers to prevent them from doing so. Nevertheless, despite such grim circumstances, fast-food workers have pushed their plight quite successfully into the national consciousness just as Occupy movements have done.
Their campaign, entitled “Fast Food Forward”, articulates their purpose with self-assured clarity: “Fast Food Forward joins the momentum of the Black Friday strikes and other low-wage worker struggles to build community engagement, hold corporations and their CEOs accountable, and to raise wages so that all Americans can prosper”.14 Despite its origins in New York City, the movement is gaining momentum; many are now calling for a nationwide strike to take place on 29 August and even President Obama has addressed the issue.
How is all of this relevant for the contingent academic workforce? Well, for one thing, there is strength in numbers. Collective action is an especially effective instrument both to challenge and redress structural inequalities. If, as the aforementioned statistics indicate, seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by adjuncts, then a walkout would bring the academy to a grinding halt. If fast-food workers with fewer career opportunities, less educational attainment, more grueling working conditions (e.g. fast-paced environments, high-temperature workplaces, etc.), and far more to lose can risk their only source of income for themselves and their families for the sake of the collective good, then what is preventing adjuncts from doing the same? The short answer is simple: nothing.
Alas, many adjuncts enable and perpetuate the “system” through their deferential subservience simply by participating in it (recent unionization efforts at Georgetown and elsewhere duly noted). As universities and departments downsize and the numbers of Ph.D. graduates outpace available jobs, many adjuncts accept grossly underpaid positions with long working hours and virtually no benefits with the expectation that a foot in the door will somehow lead to the promised land of a tenure-track position. Supply and demand dictates otherwise and the vast battalions of well-paid academic administrators are more than happy to continue to exploit such naïve and misguided expectations in the name of efficiency.
Surely, too, graduate programs inculcate (and indeed indoctrinate) students in the ways of the academy: publish or perish and do not rock the proverbial boat. On the one hand, academics are expected to challenge scholarly orthodoxies in their respective fields through creative, innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship. And yet in other aspects of their lives, namely those that deal with the contractual conditions under which they labor, they must conform and remain obedient in order to secure employment. It becomes an insidious and corrosive form of selection in which independent thought is filtered out of a system that was designed to protect it. Contradictions become self-evident: the imposition of an authorial canon in the humanities is anathema, whereas wage slavery becomes institutionalized.
Read more: Counterpunch
Posted in Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Advocacy, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Government, Job market, Organizing, Politics, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions
Tagged adjuncts, Equity, Faculty, Organizing, Protests, Students, Unions, Working conditions
(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The walkout by service workers in the US on August 29 marked a number of efforts over the past year to organize and make a statement on cost of living ground lost amidst inflation and a tanking economy. Economic reports in Canada and the US for August merely indicate the long trend toward part-time McJobs as youth are more and more often finding that their competition is their grandmothers or seniors unable to make it without additional income. Requests by the workers is an increase in the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr to $15/hr and the right to unionize without interference from employers. Obama democrats are proposing a modest increase to $9/hr.
Like the McJob trend, the large balance of college and university jobs are now part-time and low wage. Many with the McAdemic job, defined by low pay and limited prospects, work just above minimum wage when it’s all said and done. Although among the most exploited of part-time workers given their expertise and education debt-load, adjunct, contingent, or sessional faculty members in Canada and the US retain an element of autonomy for their job. Whether with a modicum of a wage per course or a piecemeal per student wage for online instructors, many by and large take home a pay that hovers just above minimum wage after hours in are calculated. Unlike the basic McJob, which has a definitive beginning and end to the workday, the academic job has no limits to the amount of time expended to prepare, teach, counsel, and assess. And given that, like for most with a McJob, there is a dignity to a McAdemic job and most put in long hours (e.g., 10x contact hours required) that knowingly reduce their wages to something just above the minimum.
In BC, the minimum wage is merely $10.25, which today after exchange and purchasing power parity is about $7.25/hr USD. At UBC, the step 1 salary for contingent or sessional faculty is $5,970 per 3 credit course (about $4,305 USD after exchange and PPP). Comparisons of McAdemic job with McJob and of stratification within the two sectors are not exaggerated, as Postdoctoral Fellow Brian Haman wrote in “What Contingent Faculty Can Learn From Fast-Food Workers:”
As universities and departments downsize and the numbers of Ph.D. graduates outpace available jobs, many adjuncts accept grossly underpaid positions with long working hours and virtually no benefits with the expectation that a foot in the door will somehow lead to the promised land of a tenure-track position. Supply and demand dictates otherwise and the vast battalions of well-paid academic administrators are more than happy to continue to exploit such naïve and misguided expectations in the name of efficiency…. Clearly, something must change. It seems, therefore, sensible, entirely feasible, and just to stand in solidarity with fast-food workers, many of whom earn as much as adjuncts. Their struggles are our struggles. Moreover, their lessons can be our lessons. The efficacy and consequences of collective action are unambiguous.
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Posted in Academics, Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, Contingent labor, Equity, Ethics, Job market, Organizing, Politics, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Movement, Students, Unions
Tagged adjuncts, Equity, Organizing, Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Working conditions
With a day of general strikes, Italy, Portugal, and Spain joined Greece in anti-austerity protests and blockades. For the last moth, the theme in Greece has been “enough is enough” as the worst capitalist crisis in Europe since the Great Depression fuels uncertainties and moves students and workers toward unity. In May, students launched mass protests across Spain while faculty members followed with their own strikes. The financial crisis is the tip of the iceberg. For example Spain, with an unemployment rate 25.8% and a youth jobless rate of 54.2%, faces the deepest budget cuts on record with cuts to spending on health, education and benefits, and increases in sales taxes and levies on income.
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Posted in Economics, Government, International, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions
Following strike approval of its membership last week, the Faculty and Staff Association (FSA) at the British Columbia Institute of Technology have withdrawn services this afternoon. Seen as a wake-up call, job action will escalate until the Union reaches an agreement. Like a number of other locals in the province, the Union’s contract expired 30 June 2010. “Better salaries and working conditions are needed to attract career-seasoned professionals from industries where wages have kept pace with inflation,” FSA executive director and chief negotiator Paul Reniers said in a press release. “Fair wages will ensure that BCIT can hire and hold on to the kinds of professionals who built this important institution.” The FSA represents over 1,400 BCIT employees including technology and part-time studies faculty, assistant instructors, technical staff, researchers, curriculum development professionals, librarians, program advisors and counselors.
Reniers noted that “low wages are already impacting BCIT’s programs. Our rates for night school are among the lowest in the region, yet 60% of BCIT registrations are in Part-Time Studies. We are losing instructors to other colleges and universities.”
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Posted in Advocacy, Employment rights, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Technology, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions
The CUPE 2278 bargaining team for Teaching Assistants at the University of British Columbia has recommended a tentative agreement for ratification tomorrow. Comments on the 2278 Facebook nearly unanimously describe the tentative agreement as “disappointing.” One week into job action and rolling picket lines the Union bargaining team signed on to mediation with Vincent Ready. Now with a tentative agreement to accept 0%-0%-2%-2% for 2010-2014, it would appear that mediation failed the students, which is to say, UBC missed an opportunity to finally recognize and validate, in wage increases, the work of its TAs. Granted, the 2278 tentative agreement is perfectly in line with the agreements of other CUPE locals but there should have been an exception made for the TAs for any number of reasons.
Managerial salaries excepted, the University stands solid with the Government’s depiction of public employees as net zero workers. The BC Liberals’ promise to make net zero=0% at the end of this month made it easy for the University and put tremendous pressure on the 2278 bargaining team. The TAs will average this out at just 1% per year. At a national level over the past 3 years, BC employees have received the lowest average increases in the country, averaging just a bit over 0.3% per year.
Ok. There have been questions raised concerning a post on administrative salaries and increases over the past 6-7 years at the University of British Columbia. The UBC President’s Office had the Faculty Association retracting a component of a CUPE 2278 letter forwarded to faculty members, which ended in a public apology by FAUBC President Nancy Langton for not fact-checking the Union’s summary of UBC President Toope’s salary increases. So here are some facts…
One question concerns a net increase in administrators or managers in the University and average 5% annual increases in their salaries while the BC Liberal government has designated most public employees as net zero workers. At a national level over the past 3 years, BC employees have received the lowest average increases in the country, averaging just a bit over 0.3% per year. Are administrators’ salaries at UBC increasing, or how can they be, at an average of 5% per year? And why are these same administrators intent on suppressing already excessively low wages, against inflation, raising tuition and costs, etc., of Teaching Assistants?
As GTA wages at UBC have been stagnant (i.e., 0%), administrative salaries have skyrocketed. UBC President Toope’s salary was for 2010-11 depending on which UBC report is used, $528,504 (UBC’s Financial Information Act Report for Year Ended March 31, 2011) or $378,000 + $50,000 Incentive Plan + $58,408 Housing perks + others = $580,978 (UBC’s Public Sector Executive Compensation Report, 2011/12) (For comparative information across Canada, see How Much Does Your University President Make?). Using UBC’s Financial Information Act Report, from 2005, the year UBC began to basically roll over CUPE 2278 contracts, to 2011, the last year of accessible data, the President’s salary rose from $434,567 to $528,504 (22% increase). The Provost’s salary increased from $230,887 to $321,023, a whopping 39% increase! These two are comparison’s between 2005 and 2011 in the differential of salaries for the positions (e.g., President Piper’s outgoing salary and President Toope’s ongoing salary, which is a fair comparison and similar to the way initial appointment salaries are handled). The new Concordia University President’s salary ($357,000) raised eyebrows recently in Quebec on the heels of the largest and most sustained student strike in Canadian history.
Comparatively, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s salary was for 2011, $317,574 (inc. car perk) + benefits + house perk 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa). US President Barack Obama’s salary was for 2011, $400,000 + $50,000 expense account + $100,000 travel account + $19,000 entertainment account = $569,000). Of course, these salaries pale next to private sector University President and corporate Chief salaries. The four top Executives of UBC Properties Trust enjoy a combined $1.3m in salaries, including perks for cars.
The salary of VP Human Resources, who manages bargaining for the University, jumped between 2005 and 2011 from $191,793 to $230,704 (20% increase). The Director of Faculty Relations’ salary rocketed from $119,615 to $198,209 (41% increase). And so on. Deans have made certain that there is similar progress with their salaries. For example, the Business Dean’s salary bounced from $334,196 to $422,304 (26% increase) while the Education Dean’s salary leaped from $216,519 to $261,732 (21% increase). Through 2010, the Arts Dean’s salary quickly grew from $191,408 to $249,816 (30% in 6 years). It is no mystery why the ranks of managers at UBC have swelled in numbers over the past few years. The transition of Associate Deans and others to management via the 2010-12 Collective Agreement merely instrumented trends and ambitions.
Another question raised is why are these same administrators intent on exploiting Sessional faculty members at UBC and suppressing their already pitifully low wages? For example, the Masters of Education Technology revenue generating program at UBC, which has basically bailed the Faculty of Education out of a dire financial crisis (e.g., 130% or $1,893,015 over budget for its 270 Sessional faculty appointments in 2008-09), uses Sessionals to teach about 85% of its courses and pays them a piecemeal $242.28 per student wage. Denied office space, the Sessionals often work below the minimum wage ($10.25 / hour) after gross hours in and net wages out are calculated.
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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Budgets & Funding, Corporate University, Employment rights, Faculty, Salary/Economic Benefits, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Administration, Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
Open Letter on the SFU labour dispute:
We, the undersigned SFU faculty members, are in solidarity with the TSSU and CUPE in their struggle for better working conditions.
The workers represented by TSSU and CUPE deserve a better deal — they deserve better working conditions, they deserve a better wage, and they deserve more respect from their employer for the work they do.
And they deserve a real contract, having been without one for two years now.The campus unions’ struggle, however, goes beyond their immediate bargaining demands. The primary mission of this public university — to teach its students well — is not accomplished only in the classroom. It is also accomplished by the example the university sets.
The university should be an engaging and engaged intellectual environment, and a good and fair and decent place to work. But working conditions at SFU have been worsening for years. Wages have been frozen while workloads have risen.
The educational system is under increasing stress, from reduced faculty numbers to larger classes, from rapidly rising fees to streamlined academic programs.
Students are paying more for reduced programs, and graduate student workers are being paid less for doing more work. Everyone is told to “do more with less.” But that is another word for austerity at SFU and in the university sector in BC at large.
The university administration is passing on the burden of austerity to its workers. While administrators raise their salaries at a rate faster than faculty and staff salaries, while resources are diverted to areas of the university that are not of direct benefit to its education mission, SFU’s most vulnerable employees — TAs, sessionals, contingent faculty and staff — are being hit the hardest.
The TSSU and CUPE struggle is a struggle against this austerity. It is more than a demand for better wages for the unions’ members; its aim is more than better working conditions.
Its aim is for a better university, a university worthy of being called a place of higher education. It is a demand for a university that is truly engaged in the world and that is a truly engaging place to work and teach and learn.
In other words, TSSU and CUPE’s struggle is a struggle that concerns every member of the SFU community and we should all, wholeheartedly, support and engage in this struggle.
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Posted in Advocacy, Employment rights, Faculty, Organizing, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Faculty, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions, Working conditions
CUPE 2278 President Trish Everett advises pickets at the Physics Building
CUPE 2278 Teaching Assistants at the University of British Columbia are continuing with rolling pickets across campus and the picket lines continue to grow. Pickets at the IK Barber Centre / Library on Friday and the Physics Building on Monday drew large numbers of 2278 members, supporters, and students refusing to cross the picket lines. The Union’s Bargaining Team heads into mediation with Vince Ready today. “In the mean time,” the Union advises, “job action on campus will continue.”
One graduate student summed up the situation: “I strike for 2 hours and I TA for 2 hours.” She is joined by hundreds who have now moved on to the picket lines. Another decried: “I love being a student but my bank account does not.” CUPE 2278’s information leaflets indicate the basic issues for bargaining and striking: A fair wage increase; Tuition waiver to protect increases from immediate claw back; TA job security for the graduate students; and child-care assistance. Child-care fees on campus have risen by 20% while TA wage have remained stagnant or lost ground to inflation over the past seven years. Geography TA Alejandro Cervantes explained these challenges: “The yearly fee for daycare is more than I get as a TA.”
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Posted in Advocacy, Employment rights, Organizing, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions, Working conditions
For the current CUPE 2278 strike, the Teaching Assistants have adopted UBC “Mind Your Place” as an operative theme, playing on UBC’s Strategic Plan logo “Place of Mind.” Like another domino of logos and brands, this one has now fallen. UBC “Mind Your Place” is CUPE 2278’s not so subtle reminder of the TAs’ struggles for the fair working conditions that might allow them to be a part of what Hannah Arendt called in 1973 “the life of the mind.” It’s too easy for University managers to enjoy their perks and salary increases and raise flags to the great “Place of Mind” while passing the “Mind y/our Place” buck to scapegoats such as PSEC. The money is there and will be there, in house at the University, to settle with the students on 5% per year over at least four years.
Many of us recall the previous administration’s campaign brand and logo, “Think about It,” as it fell into some disrepute and was eventually abandoned around 2003-2004 and CUPE 2278’s last strike. The brand had toppled, as graduate student Kedrick James put it at the time, from “Think about It” to “Build on It.” Priorities and power shifted to UBC Properties Trust. Nowadays,the four top Executives of UBC Properties Trust enjoy a cumulative $1.3m in salaries, including perks for cars
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Posted in Advocacy, Budgets & Funding, Employment rights, Organizing, Salary/Economic Benefits, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions, Working conditions
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