Israeli Teachers Back to Work After 55-Day Strike

Posted on December 27, 2007 by | Comments Off on Israeli Teachers Back to Work After 55-Day Strike

javno.com:
Israeli Teachers Back to Work After 55-Day Strike

Teachers struck a deal with the government on Thursday to end Israel’s longest strike that nearly wrecked the academic year for 600,000 students.

About 41,000 members of Israel’s Secondary School Teachers Union walked off the job in early October in support of a big pay rise and a new collective bargaining agreement.

The 55-day strike has dominated newspaper headlines.

The new deal will give the teachers an immediate wage increase of 13.5 percent in return for more hours at school helping failing and gifted students. The government said it would work to reduce the number of students per class.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes

Ohio: Editorial: Strike legislator’s idea of prohibiting teacher strikes

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The Plain Dealer: Editorial: Strike legislator’s idea of prohibiting teacher strikes

A well-regarded downstate legislator has good intentions but a bad idea: Well ston Republican John Carey wants to ban school-employee strikes. Schools would instead settle labor contracts through binding arbitration.

A 1983 Ohio law forbids strikes by police, firefighters, prison guards and emergency medical personnel. In case of deadlocks, those workers instead are subject to arbitration. Carey, chair of the Senate’s budget-writing panel, said teachers are just as important as safety forces to Ohio’s betterment.

A spokeswoman for the 130,000-member Ohio Education Association, a union for teachers and other school employees, said there have been only six school strikes (in five school districts) in the last three fiscal years. Given that Ohio has 612, that means fewer than 1 percent of all school districts were struck during the triennium.

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Posted in Commentary, Government, Strikes & Labor Disputes

Israel: Listen to the teachers

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Haaretz: Listen to the teachers

One cannot depend on transient politicians such as the prime minister and the education minister to take advantage of the momentum created by the long teachers strike and make a giant step toward changing the school system. This is not because of a lack of desire to make the longed-for change; the reason is that they have no time to make it.

The salary hike, the additional classroom hours and smaller numbers of students per class is important, but salvation will not come from those quarters.

The conclusion is that the teachers must take the fate of education into their own hands. The fashion of parental involvement in education has been, apparently, a resounding failure. Perhaps the time has come to bring about greater involvement from the teachers.

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Posted in Commentary

California: College reaches contract with faculty union

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Desert Dispatch: College reaches contract with faculty union
Twelve percent raise over two years approved

Barstow Community College faculty members will receive a 12 percent pay increase over two years in a agreement announced Thursday at a meeting of the college’s board of trustees.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts

Union for part-timers ‘best possible thing’ for Ontario colleges

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National Union of Public and General Employees: Union for part-timers ‘best possible thing’ for Ontario colleges

The organizing of part-time staff is the “best possible thing” that could happen to Ontario’s 24 community colleges, says Roger Couvrette, chair of the Organization of Part-Time and Sessional Employees of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (OPSECAAT).

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Posted in Unions

Quebec: University teachers vote to strike

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libcom.org: University teachers vote to strike

An overwhelming majority of teachers l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQRT) voted in favour of strike action in support of demands for increased staffing and wages.

Over half of UQTR’s teachers participated in the vote, only 25% are needed for the vote to count as legitimate. With many teachers on sabbatical or working at other campuses the turnout was considered by the union to be ver encouraging.

83.4% of teachers voted for a five-day strike action to begin in January. Negotiations are currently on-going. The main demands are for the hiring of new teachers to ease staffing shortages; for a reaonable salary increase and for wages to be equal in the city and the provinces.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes

GW Adjunct faculty finalize contract

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GWHatchet.com: Adjunct faculty finalize contract

Following months of negotiations with the University, the adjunct faculty union is set to distribute a contract concerning job security, promotions and salaries by mid-December, a union leader said.

Kip Lornell, who is both a union leader and an adjunct music professor, said he is confident the part-time faculty will approve the contract.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts, Contingent labor

Academics seek collective bargaining for UW faculty

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Green Bay Press Gazette: Hansen, academics seek collective bargaining for UW faculty

Hailing the right to choose collective bargaining as universal and fundamental, state Sen. Dave Hansen today announced the introduction of a bill that would grant that option to University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts

Language Professors Appear to Be in Demand, English Professors Less So

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The Chronicle: Language Professors Appear to Be in Demand, English Professors Less So

The Modern Language Association projected that the number of open foreign-language faculty positions will jump by 4.3 percent for this academic year over last year, while the number of jobs for English professors will decline.

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Posted in Faculty

With Eye on China, Canadian Education Company Buys Community College

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Vancouver Sun: CIBT Education Group to buy Sprott-Shaw College

A Vancouver-based company that runs 17 post-secondary schools in China announced Monday it will buy Western Canada’s largest and oldest private community college, in an all-cash, $12-million deal.

CIBT Education Group, which is listed on the TSX-Venture exchange, said the transaction will allow it to export Vancouver-based Sprott Shaw Community College’s 140-plus vocational programs to China. At the same time, CIBT will now be able to direct a ready market of its students in China to Sprott’s schools across B.C. Currently, CIBT is sending many of its students in China on to schools in the U.K.

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Posted in Corporate University

Professors Could Take Performance-Enhancing Drugs for the Mind

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The Chronicle: Professors Could Take Performance-Enhancing Drugs for the Mind

While caffeine reigns as the supreme drug of the professoriate, some university faculty members have started popping “smart” pills to enhance their mental energy and ability to work long hours, according to two University of Cambridge scientists who polled some of their colleagues about their use of cognitive-enhancing drugs.

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Posted in Faculty

Last defendant in murder-for-hire case sentenced

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Virginia Pilot: Last defendant in murder-for-hire case sentenced

The last of the three men charged in a murder-for-hire plot against a Tidewater Community College professor last year admitted his role and was ordered to serve eight and a half years in prison on Wednesday.

The defendant, Jay Glosser, 54, a former associate professor of information systems technology at the Norfolk campus, will serve six months more than his co-defendants. He reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, in which he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, solicitation and conspiracy to commit extortion. He waived his pre-sentence report and was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years with all but eight and a half suspended.

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Posted in Crime, Faculty, Violence

Striking professors slam university heads for going to court

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Haaretz: Striking professors slam university heads for going to court

Striking senior university faculty said the decision by the university presidents to seek an injunction from the Labor Court to end their 10-week strike was unprecedented in academia. Some of the lecturers passed resolutions condemning the move; the Technion in Haifa began the process to have its president removed.

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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes

Massachusetts: Assumption faculty rap president

Posted on December 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on Massachusetts: Assumption faculty rap president

Worcester Telegraph & Gazette News: Assumption faculty rap president

Assumption College faculty members, by a vote of 45-33 this week, charged President Francesco Cesareo and his cabinet with violating policy when they refused to host a gay activist veteran as a Veterans Day speaker, but the faculty also voted not to pursue the issue.

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Posted in Administration

Scholar’s Visa Denial Upheld

Posted on December 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on Scholar’s Visa Denial Upheld

Inside Higher Ed: Scholar’s Visa Denial Upheld

The case of Tariq Ramadan has become central to efforts by academic and civil liberties groups to challenge the denial of U.S. visas to foreign scholars. And on Thursday, a federal judge handed those groups a defeat by upholding the right of the government to deny a visa to Ramadan, a prominent Muslim scholar who has been unable to enter the United States to accept a position at the University of Notre Dame.

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Posted in Faculty

“Swarthmorofascism”

Posted on December 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on “Swarthmorofascism”

Inside Higher Ed:

Jonah Goldberg’s new book is being promoted with a little (and a little inaccurate) college bashing. The book jacket for Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, forthcoming in January from Doubleday, proclaims: “The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.” Leaving aside the rather large issue of the charge that Brown and Swarthmore educate for fascism, Kieran Healy — blogging at Crooked Timber — points out a factual problem: Swarthmore doesn’t award education degrees. Healy, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, and commenters on the blog have a good time exploring “Swarthmorofascism.” A spokeswoman for the college confirmed that Healy is correct and Goldberg is not, and said she didn’t know why Goldberg made Swarthmore a target.

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Posted in Academics

Short Shrift to MLK Day?

Posted on December 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on Short Shrift to MLK Day?

Insider Higher Ed: Short Shrift to MLK Day?

In the 1970s and early 1980s, supporters rallied to create a federal holiday memorializing Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in the civil rights movement and his union activism. For many students today, those efforts have translated to King-themed activities and a respite from coursework one day a year.

As usual, Ohio State University has no intention of holding classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day next year, when it will fall on Monday, January 21. But unique scheduling difficulties recently forced administrators to diverge from the typical calendar guidelines, which would have placed the winter quarter’s commencement ceremony on Easter Sunday and the summer quarter’s on Labor Day weekend. The resulting adjustment would have left students with more Fridays than Mondays, so a plan finalized partially with input from a group of faculty decided on a solution: holding classes that might have been held on the King holiday on the first Friday of the winter quarter instead.

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Posted in Administration

Tracking Bias or Guilt by Association?

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Inside Higher Ed: Tracking Bias or Guilt by Association?

If a professor is a member of a church that holds anti-gay views, and isn’t forthright about those views, does that make the professor’s vote against the tenure bid of a gay professor suspect?

That is one of the questions explored in an unusual lawsuit against the University of Michigan — filed nearly three years ago but thus far bogged down in preliminary motions. State courts have twice rejected requests by Michigan to have the case dismissed and a third request was scheduled to be heard this week, but postponed. The professor, Peter Hammer, won a majority of votes of the faculty of the law school in his case. But the 18-12 margin was two shy of the two-thirds requirement to win tenure, so he lost his job, and now is a professor of law at Wayne State University. He says he was the first male faculty member rejected by the faculty for tenure in 40 years.

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Posted in Diversity, Tenure & Promotion

The Attack That Wasn’t

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Inside Higher Ed: The Attack That Wasn’t

What on Monday morning was becoming a cause célèbre for bloggers and pundits alike was anything but by early afternoon, as a Princeton University student who is a member of a conservative campus group admitted to police that he fabricated an assault that he said had occurred Friday several miles from campus.

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Posted in Students

Rescue Mission or Hostile Takeover?

Posted on December 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on Rescue Mission or Hostile Takeover?

Inside Higher Ed: Rescue Mission or Hostile Takeover?

An attempt to purchase a small, financially strapped Cleveland business college has enough elements to fill a tabloid: a for-profit suitor with unclear motives, allegations flying in all directions, a judge on a mission to broker a sale, a violated gag order that sent the university’s president to jail.

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Posted in Corporate University