Tag Archives: Unions

Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | Comments Off on Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers

The Chronicle: Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers
Some look beyond the big unions for real improvement in working conditions

The largest organizers of college faculty unions—the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association—have made big strides in recruiting adjunct instructors and helping them gain representation through collective bargaining.

But the three groups have a long way to go before their membership and their leadership reflect the dominant role that adjunct instructors play in the higher-education work force, a Chronicle survey of the organizations reveals. Such instructors now account for about two-thirds of all faculty members employed by public and private colleges.

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Posted in Contingent labor, Unions, Working conditions

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Faculty Unions in Ohio and Wisconsin Accept Concessions Defeat

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | Comments Off on Faculty Unions in Ohio and Wisconsin Accept Concessions Defeat

The Chronicle: Faculty Unions in Ohio and Wisconsin Hunker Down

Political climate forces leaders to accept concessions and defeat

The attacks on Ohio’s and Wisconsin’s public-sector unions mounted by fiscally conservative lawmakers this year are forcing unions that represent public-college faculty in those states to rethink their strategies and basic missions.

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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Unions

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NLRB Proposes Speeding Up Unionization Votes at Private Colleges

Posted on June 21, 2011 by | Comments Off on NLRB Proposes Speeding Up Unionization Votes at Private Colleges

The Chronicle: NLRB Proposes Speeding Up Unionization Votes at Private Colleges

Employees of private colleges would find it easier to vote on forming unions under rules changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board and scheduled for publication in Wednesday’s Federal Register. Among other changes, the proposals would allow for the electronic filing of election petitions, establish standardized time frames for the resolution or litigation of election-related disputes, defer litigation over most voter-eligibility issues until after elections, and consolidate all election-related appeals to the board into a single post-election appeals process, according to an NLRB news release. The proposed revisions are expected to meet opposition from many private-sector employers that fall under the board’s purview and have complained that speeding up elections would leave them too little time to mount effective anti-unionization campaigns and would otherwise stack the deck against them.

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Posted in Organizing, Unions

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Some Union Members Are More Equal Than Others

Posted on June 13, 2011 by | Comments Off on Some Union Members Are More Equal Than Others

Commentary

The Chronicle: Some Union Members Are More Equal Than Others

By Keith Hoeller and Jack Longmate

Do tenure-track and adjunct faculty belong in the same union? A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that tenure-track faculty are “managerial employees” and not entitled to unions in the private sector. But in public-sector unions, tenured professors are often combined with contingent faculty, who are certainly not “managerial.” Tenure-stream faculty supervise the adjuncts, determining workload, interviewing, hiring, evaluating, and deciding whether to rehire them. Gregory Saltzman observed in the National Education Association’s “2000 Almanac of Higher Education” that combined units may not be ideal because of the “conflicts of interests between these two groups.”

In fact, the unequal treatment of professors by their unions has come to resemble the plot of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Animal Farm.

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Posted in Unions

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Union Arm of AAUP Blasts Its Handling of Key Executive Changes

Posted on June 13, 2011 by | Comments Off on Union Arm of AAUP Blasts Its Handling of Key Executive Changes

The Chronicle: Union Arm of AAUP Blasts Its Handling of Key Executive Changes

The American Association of University Professors’ umbrella organization for unionized local affiliates has adopted a resolution condemning how the group’s leadership went about ousting the AAUP’s general secretary, Gary Rhoades, and protesting that the AAUP’s executive committee and its president, Cary Nelson, are usurping the powers of its national leadership council.

The resolution, overwhelmingly passed by the AAUP’s Collective Bargaining Congress late Thursday during the organization’s annual conference here, also condemns how Mr. Nelson has gone about handling the process of replacing the director of the AAUP’s department of organizing and services following a decision by the staff member in that position, Mike Mauer, to step down. Mr. Nelson defied the wishes of the leadership of the Collective Bargaining Congress in appointing a staff member to the search committee that he established to fill the position.

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Posted in Unions

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AAUP President Urges Faculty to Join Battle Against Unwarranted Cuts

Posted on June 9, 2011 by | Comments Off on AAUP President Urges Faculty to Join Battle Against Unwarranted Cuts

The Chronicle: AAUP President Urges Faculty to Join Battle Against Unwarranted Cuts

Washington
The president of the American Association of University Professors painted a bleak picture of higher education in his remarks that opened the association’s annual meeting here on Wednesday.

“The last eight to 10 months has been like nothing that I’ve ever experienced before,” said Cary Nelson, the association’s president, who has been a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1970.

In a speech that highlighted recent attacks on collective-bargaining rights, academic freedom, and tenure, Mr. Nelson chastised faculty members who refuse to acknowledge that the nation’s higher-education system is broken. He said his own predictions over the years about the shifting higher-education landscape turned out not to be bleak enough.

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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Unions

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Labor Board Rejects Religious Exemption for Saint Xavier U. and Says Adjuncts Can Unionize

Posted on June 2, 2011 by | Comments Off on Labor Board Rejects Religious Exemption for Saint Xavier U. and Says Adjuncts Can Unionize

The Chronicle: Labor Board Rejects Religious Exemption for Saint Xavier U. and Says Adjuncts Can Unionize

A regional official of the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Saint Xavier University, a Roman Catholic institution in Illinois, is not sufficiently religious to fall outside that agency’s jurisdiction, and has cleared the way for the institution’s roughly 240 adjunct faculty members to hold a unionization vote.

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Posted in Legal issues, Organizing, Unions

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Connecticut Measure Would Strip Many Faculty Members of Collective-Bargaining Rights

Posted on April 21, 2011 by | Comments Off on Connecticut Measure Would Strip Many Faculty Members of Collective-Bargaining Rights

The Chronicle: Connecticut Measure Would Strip Many Faculty Members of Collective-Bargaining Rights

A budget bill working its way through Connecticut’s House of Representatives would have the effect of stripping many college faculty members of their rights to engage in collective bargaining, by reclassifying them as “managerial employees” if they are heads of academic departments or hold certain other decision-making roles.

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Posted in Unions

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AAUP Appears Ready to Part Ways With Gary Rhoades, Its General Secretary

Posted on April 12, 2011 by | Comments Off on AAUP Appears Ready to Part Ways With Gary Rhoades, Its General Secretary

The Chronicle: AAUP Appears Ready to Part Ways With Gary Rhoades, Its General Secretary

After three years as general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, Gary Rhoades may be on his way out, the casualty of personality clashes between him and the organization’s longtime president—Cary Nelson—and its staff members in Washington, according to AAUP sources familiar with the disputes.

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Posted in Unions

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Anti-Faculty-Union Proposal in Ohio Came From Public-University Association

Posted on March 9, 2011 by | Comments Off on Anti-Faculty-Union Proposal in Ohio Came From Public-University Association

The Chronicle: Anti-Faculty-Union Proposal in Ohio Came From Public-University Association

Leaders of faculty unions in Ohio are bristling at the revelation that an association of the state’s public universities was behind a controversial proposal that would strip most public-college faculty members of collective-bargaining rights by reclassifying them as management-level employees.

Bruce E. Johnson, president of the association, the Inter-University Council of Ohio, confirmed in an interview on Tuesday that he had suggested the measure to members of the state Senate. It was approved by the Senate last week, as part of a broader overhaul of Ohio’s collective-bargaining laws now pending in the state House of Representatives.

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The Long History of Labor Bashing

Posted on March 7, 2011 by | Comments Off on The Long History of Labor Bashing

The Chronicle Review: The Long History of Labor Bashing

By Nelson Lichtenstein
When he was still President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, now mayor-elect of Chicago, famously quipped: “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”

Republican governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, and other states have certainly taken that advice to heart. By emphasizing, and in some cases manipulating, the red ink flowing through so many state budgets, they have leveraged the crisis to strike a body blow at the public-sector unions that represent so many teachers, professors, social workers, and municipal employees. The collective-bargaining rights of the police and firefighters, often a privileged caste, are also being threatened in some states.

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Posted in Unions

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AAUP Accuses Bethune-Cookman U. of Denying Due Process to 7 Dismissed Professors

Posted on October 25, 2010 by | Comments Off on AAUP Accuses Bethune-Cookman U. of Denying Due Process to 7 Dismissed Professors

The Chronicle: AAUP Accuses Bethune-Cookman U. of Denying Due Process to 7 Dismissed Professors

An investigative panel of the American Association of University Professors has accused Bethune-Cookman University of denying due process to seven dismissed professors, including four men who, the panel says, were fired for sexual harassment based mainly on hearsay and on complaints from unnamed students relayed to administrators by a consultant.

In a report issued on Friday, the AAUP panel broadly characterized Bethune-Cookman, a historically black college in Daytona Beach, Fla., of being “repressive of academic freedom.”

“A pervasive atmosphere currently exists at Bethune-Cookman University in which the administration supports favorites and ignores or punishes those who fall out of favor or who question, contend, or appeal,” the report says. “No adequate mechanism or procedure exists for the impartial or balanced hearing of grievances.”

Officials at Bethune-Cookman said on Monday that they planned to respond to the AAUP report, but were not yet prepared to do so.

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Posted in Tenure & Promotion, Unions, Working conditions

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Workplace No 17 (2010): Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Posted on September 19, 2010 by | Comments Off on Workplace No 17 (2010): Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 17 (2010):
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/issue/view/8

Articles
——–
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions: Special Issue Introduction
Howard Stevenson

Terminating the Teaching Profession: Neoliberal Reform, Resistance and the Assault on Teachers in Chile
Jill Pinkney Pastrana

Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context: Linking Local and Global efforts
Cindy Rottmann

Australian Education Unionism in the Age of Neoliberalism: Education as a Public Good, Not a Private Benefit
Jeff Garsed, John Williamson

“What’s Best for Kids” vs. Teacher Unions: How Teach For America Blames Teacher Unions for the Problems of Urban Schools
Heidi Katherine Pitzer

Gramsci, Embryonic Organic Intellectuals, and Scottish Teacher Learning Representatives: Alternatives to Neoliberal Approaches to Professional Development in the K-12 Sector
Alex Alexandrou

Pedagogy of Liminality? The Case of Turkish Teachers’ Union Egitim-Sen
Duygun Gokturk

Book Reviews
——–
Review of Industrial Relations in Education: Transforming the School Workforce
Merryn Hutchings

A Portrait of Authenticity: A Review of Carl Mirra’s (2010) The AdmirableRadical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. Kent, OH: Kent University Press
Adam Renner

Review of Union Learning Representatives: Challenges and Opportunities
Becky Wright

Review of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Marisa Huerta

Review of Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex
Leah Schweitzer

The Sociopathology of Everyday Business: A Review of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace
Jim Rovira

Review of The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights
Paul Orlowski

Technology and (Human) Rights: A Review of Human Rights in the Global Information Society
Stephen Petrina

Review of The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives
Steven L. Strauss

Miscellany
——–
Connecting Teacher Unions and Teacher Union Research
AERA Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG

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Posted in Publications, Unions

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Chicago Teachers Union CORE Caucus Upends Old Mis-leaders in Landslide Vote!

Posted on June 14, 2010 by | Comments Off on Chicago Teachers Union CORE Caucus Upends Old Mis-leaders in Landslide Vote!

Chicago Teachers Union CORE Caucus Upends Old Mis-leaders in Landslide Vote!

From the CORE web site– “We support:
• Capping CTU officer and staff salaries to the average teacher salary prorated over 12 months.
• Limit standardized tests. Ban using test results to punish, label or denigrate schools, students or teachers.
• Repeal mayoral control of schools and restore our right to collectively bargain class sizes, counselor loads and stop school closings and reconstitutions.
• Lead legislation to fund all schools equitably and return all TIF (Tax Increment Financing) funds to each school taxing district.”

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1472&section=Article (Substance News coverage)
http://coreteachers.com/ (Core Caucus website)

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Obama Admin Connected to Anti-Teacher Union Ads?

Posted on May 20, 2010 by | Comments Off on Obama Admin Connected to Anti-Teacher Union Ads?

Education Notes Online: Obama Admin Connected to Anti-Teacher Union Ads?

I got a call from a retired teacher yesterday asking for ICE. He said he had done some research on the anti-UFT ads and traced them to some Obama administration operatives. Here is the email he sent me as a follow-up.

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Posted in Unions

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Faculty-Union Allies, Hopeful About Obama’s Labor Board, Hear From Its Leader

Posted on April 13, 2010 by | Comments Off on Faculty-Union Allies, Hopeful About Obama’s Labor Board, Hear From Its Leader

The Chronicle: Faculty-Union Allies, Hopeful About Obama’s Labor Board, Hear From Its Leader

It’s only a matter of time before the National Labor Relations Board is faced with a challenge to a 2004 ruling that says graduate students at private institutions aren’t employees and therefore don’t have bargaining rights, its leader told attendees at a labor conference here on Monday.

“This is not an issue that we’ll bring up, but I have heard there are cases out there in the works,” said Wilma B. Liebman, the opening speaker at the conference, held at the City University of New York’s Baruch College.

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Posted in Students, Unions

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AAUP Will Investigate Firing at LSU

Posted on April 6, 2010 by | Comments Off on AAUP Will Investigate Firing at LSU

Inside Higher Ed: AAUP Will Investigate Firing at LSU

The American Association of University Professors on Monday announced that it is beginning a formal investigation into the case of Ivor van Heerden, who was a leading whistle blower in the analysis of what went wrong after Katrina hit New Orleans, and who is suing Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, charging that he was fired from his position at the university’s hurricane research center because of anger over his criticisms of the Army Corps of Engineers. The university, while declining to discuss details about the case, has denied that he lost his job for that reason.

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UK: Cash-starved universities will have huge classes, says union

Posted on January 13, 2010 by | Comments Off on UK: Cash-starved universities will have huge classes, says union

The Guardian: Cash-starved universities will have huge classes, says union

Lecturers claim savage government cuts will close universities and send 14,000 academics to the dole queue

Universities in the UK will be among the most overcrowded in the world within three years if savage government cuts to higher education go ahead, academics warned today.

The lecturers’ union, UCU, said more than £900m of cuts announced last month would fill lecture halls with “some of the biggest class sizes in the world” by 2013.

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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Working conditions

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Contract Fight at U. of Hawaii Knocks Down Faculty Morale

Posted on January 11, 2010 by | Comments Off on Contract Fight at U. of Hawaii Knocks Down Faculty Morale

The Chronicle: Contract Fight at U. of Hawaii Knocks Down Faculty Morale
Disheartened by a pay cut that they say violates their agreement, some professors look for jobs elsewhere

Discouraged by stalled contract negotiations and their employer’s decision last month to cut their pay, faculty members at the University of Hawaii made their way back to class this week. Although talks are slated to resume, their future is hazy. A few professors—set on leaving the system and its troubles behind—are poised to look for work elsewhere in a job market that is grim for most.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts, Unions

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Hawaii Faculty Union Asks Court to Block Pay Cuts and Order Arbitration

Posted on January 8, 2010 by | Comments Off on Hawaii Faculty Union Asks Court to Block Pay Cuts and Order Arbitration

The Chronicle: Hawaii Faculty Union Asks Court to Block Pay Cuts and Order Arbitration

The union for faculty members at the University of Hawaii filed a motion today asking a state court to block pay cuts recently announced by the system’s president, M.R.C. Greenwood. Ms. Greenwood has agreed to personally join in a mediation session with the union over stalled contract talks, but she has rejected a union grievance demanding that she retract the salary cuts, which would show up in checks issued January 15. The union now wants the court to temporarily halt the cuts and order arbitration of its demands.

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Posted in Legal issues, Salary/Economic Benefits, Unions

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