Category Archives: unions

Right to Work, by the Numbers: Part 5

Posted by martinkich in collective bargaining, unions, working conditions, legislation and tagged with ,

Employment in Manufacturing

Today, only about 8.2% of U.S. workers are employed in manufacturing.

Even before the Great Recession, manufacturing employment in the U.S. had been steadily declining, with a loss of approximately 4,000,000 jobs between 1998 and 2007, the decade preceding the recession. Another 1.6 million jobs in manufacturing were lost between 2008 and 2010. (In the next post in this series, I will discuss more fully the state by state losses of manufacturing jobs during the Great Recession.)

The following chart then ranks the states by the total number of manufacturing jobs in March 2013, with the right-to-work states in bold:

State No of Jobs in 0000s Rank
California 1,242.0 1
Texas     865.8     2
Ohio 663.9 3
Illinois 583.2 4
Pennsylvania 569.0 5
Michigan     548.8     6
Indiana     491.6     7
Wisconsin 463.1 8
New York 447.7 9
North Carolina     443.1     10
Georgia 356.1 11
Tennessee     318.9     12
Florida     314.8     13
Minnesota 306.4 14
Washington 288.0 15
New Jersey 250.4 16
Massachusetts 250.1 17
Missouri 248.1 18
Alabama     246.7     19
Virginia     234.1     20
Kentucky 229.4 21
South Carolina     221.5     22
Iowa     215.4     23
Oregon 174.3 24
Kansas     165.4     25
Connecticut 163.3 26
Arkansas     155.9     27
Arizona     155.4     28
Louisiana     143.1     29
Mississippi     135.9     30
Oklahoma     134.2     31
Colorado 132.4 32
Utah     119.6     33
Maryland 106.4 34
Nebraska     96.7     35
New Hampshire 65.6 36
Idaho     58.8     37
Maine 50.8 38
West Virginia 48.5 39
South Dakota     41.8     40
Rhode Island 40.3 41
Nevada     39.6     42
Vermont 32.5 43
New Mexico 29.1 44
Delaware 25.9 45
North Dakota     24.9     46
Montana 17.7 47
Hawaii 13.1 48
Alaska 11.6 49
Wyoming     9.8     50

Continue reading →

Right to Work, by the Numbers: Part 4

Posted by martinkich in legislation, unions, working conditions and tagged with ,

Historic Highs and Lows in Unemployment

In my previous post in this series, I closed by noting that proponents of “right to work” might very well want to emphasize that eight of the ten states with the lowest current unemployment averages are “right to work” states.

Those states are Virginia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, Nebraska, and North Dakota.

I have highlighted them in bold in the table that follows, which compares current unemployment rates with historic high and low unemployment rates. Continue reading →

MOOCs, Pearson, and Profits

Posted by martinkich in for-profit institutions, collective bargaining, unions, students, corporate influence, budget crises, MOOCs

This piece is reposted from the “On the Issues Blog” maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education: http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/  If you are looking for faculty-driven commentary on current issues in higher education, you should consider adding the “On the Issues” blog and the CFHE website to your links page.

MOOCs may prove to be another “bubble” like the online for-profit universities are proving to be, but their widespread adoption could be a much bigger threat to higher education than the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University ever were or will be.

In “Teaching by Hand in a Digital Age” (Chronicle of Higher Education Blogs March 11, 2013), Joseph Harris persuasively makes the case that the lack of instructor-student interaction is the fundamental failing of MOOCs—and a failing that will be especially noticeable in writing courses. Despite dubious claims that robo-readers can evaluate student writing as effectively as human readers, robo-readers clearly cannot interact in any meaningful way with the student writers themselves. They cannot give those writers a sense of the nuances in a human response to their work, a sense of how the expression of their ideas fits within broader patterns of personal and professional communication.

Harris compares MOOCs to textbooks. But MOOCs are more like digitally jazzed-up, televised courses than they are like textbooks: that is, they permit a student to be even more passively engaged than a textbook does, and they will be effective for an even narrower percentage of learners than the online degrees offered by the for-profit universities that, like the competency-driven Western Governors University, have emphasized the importance of advisers over faculty. Continue reading →

Right to Work Bills Introduced in Ohio House

Posted by martinkich in faculty, AAUP, American Association of University Professors, collective bargaining, unions, legislation and tagged with ,

I thought that this communication from the Ohio Conference might be of broader interest.

aaup
Ohio Conference Update

No Rights At Work

The Bad News:
So-Called “Right-to-Work” Legislation
Introduced in the Ohio House
They are at it again.  Despite the fact that 62 percent of Ohioans rejected the Senate Bill 5 attack on public workers nearly a year and a half ago, the extreme right-wing politicians in Columbus want to pursue similar attacks.
Earlier today, State Representatives Kristina Roegner (R-Hudson) and Ron Maag (R-Lebanon) each introduced so-called “right-to-work” bills.  Roegner’s bill deals with the private sector, while Maag’s bill deals with the public sector.
The bills are being called “Ohio Workplace Freedom” legislation, but the name could not be more misleading.
This is yet another attempt by corporate interests – many of the same ones who backed Senate Bill 5 – to end unions as we know them so that they can tip the balance in their favor at the expense of the middle class.
The corporate interests want to fool us by calling it “workplace freedom,” because what it really means is less freedom for workers.
These types of laws have already proven to have harmful effects on all citizens in the states where they have been implemented: lower wages, fewer benefits, higher poverty rates, and more workplace fatalities.
We do not yet know if House Republican leadership intends on moving these bills forward.  House Speaker Bill Batchelder (R-Medina) has been evasive on the subject.  However, it is widely believed that Gov. Kasich did not want to pursue such legislation ahead of his re-election campaign.
As always, we will continue to update our members as new information becomes available.
For more information about so-called “right-to-work,” visit the toolkit on our website.

The Good News:
AAUP Continues to Build Strength in Ohio
There are two success stories to report out of northwest Ohio:
BGSU-FA
On April 12, the Bowling Green State University Faculty Association (BGSU-FA), a chapter of the AAUP, announced that 97 percent of its membership ratified their first contract. This is no small accomplishment, as the first organizing card was signed over four years ago, and the chapter spent about two and a half years in contract negotiations – largely the result of the administration stalling during the Senate Bill 5 battle.  It is expected that the BGSU Board of Trustees will ratify the contract at their May 3 meeting. Congratulations, BGSU-FA!

UT Nursing Faculty

On April 23, the State Employment Relations Board (SERB) held a vote tally, which revealed that 70 percent of the nursing faculty at the University of Toledo voted in favor of collective bargaining. This vote means that about 34 nursing faculty will be joining the existing UT-AAUP chapter.  Our congratulations to the nursing faculty and our UT chapter for their hard work in accomplishing this goal!

 
Sincerely,
Ohio Conference AAUP Communications Committee

Right to Work, by the Numbers: Part 3

Posted by martinkich in collective bargaining, faculty, legislation, unions, working conditions and tagged with , , ,

Unemployment Rates by State

In the first two posts in this series, I made the case the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has not been driven by a preference for “right to work” states over pro-labor states, and I examined the degree to which population growth in the “Sun Belt” has been driven by immigration, which is eroding, rather than reinforcing, the anti-union sentiment in the “right to work” states in the “Sun Belt.”

In this post, I’d like to examine basic unemployment rates, state by state. What follows is the rate for March 2013, with the “right to work” states indicated in bold. Continue reading →

Ohio: Where Graduation Rates, Teaching Loads, and Administrative Bloat Have Become Part of the Debate about the State Budget

Posted by martinkich in AAUP, American Association of University Professors, budget crises, collective bargaining, corporate influence, faculty, legislation, shared governance, tuition, unions, working conditions and tagged with , ,

Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President

Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors

Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education

Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair

March 6, 2013

Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee:  my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).  The Ohio Conference AAUP represents nearly 4,500 college and university professors at both public and private institutions of higher education across the State of Ohio.  I am also a professor of American history at the University of Cincinnati where I teach courses on the Cold War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. I’ve published books and articles on the Cold War.

The mission of the Ohio Conference AAUP is to promote the greater social good that comes from a dynamic, active professoriate – professors being the backbone of quality education and research in higher education. To achieve that goal, we work to preserve and advance academic freedom – the right to engage in good teaching and important research without fear of being terminated for political reasons; and to promote shared governance, so that important decisions are made with the input from those with the expertise to make good decisions and from those who must carry out those decisions in the best interests of students and the general public.

I come to you today to share the thoughts and opinions of the Ohio Conference AAUP regarding House Bill 59, the state budget bill.  My comments will focus on three key topics: the new State Share of Instruction (SSI) formula, the provision pertaining to faculty teaching loads, and the problem of administrative bloat at our public institutions. Continue reading →

A Straightforward Case against the Privatization or Outsourcing of the Curriculum

Posted by martinkich in budget crises, collective bargaining, corporate influence, faculty, MOOCs, shared governance, unions and tagged with , , ,

Simply publishing material in a certain topic area does not confer on oneself or on one’s employees the expertise or the credentials of professionals in that field.

So a publisher of books on government and politics would not necessarily have any special expertise in governing or in running a political campaign. Likewise, a publisher of books on space exploration would not necessarily be qualified to oversee NASA or even to work for NASA. And a publisher of medical textbooks would not necessarily be qualified to diagnose a patient’s complaint, never mind to perform surgery or any other medical procedures.

So why do we think that publishers of college textbooks are automatically qualified to make curricular decisions as if they were university administrators or pedagogical decisions as if they were university faculty? How have the materials for a course suddenly become the essence of the course? Where is all of the insistence on accreditation, assessment, and accountability that has become a mantra in education at all levels?

What we may be acknowledging implicitly is that we believe that online education is inferior to on-site education. For what would be the reaction if it were announced that a textbook publisher will now be staffing on-site courses at a major public university? Continue reading →

CFHE Statement on California Senate Bill 520

Posted by martinkich in AAUP, corporate influence, faculty, legislation, MOOCs, unions and tagged with , , ,

The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, a national grass-roots coalition of faculty and staff higher education organizations, is deeply concerned about California Senate Bill 520 and what it could mean, if adopted, for the future of public higher education in California.

A well-intended but misguided effort to restore access that has been lost as a result of slashed funding for California’s public colleges and universities, this bill would hand off up to 50 courses in California’s public colleges and universities to for-profit online education providers.

It is rife with unintended consequences and would, if passed, take the state even further along the road toward dismantling its public higher education system.

For instance, the bill fatally undermines the central bulwark of quality in higher education—the role of faculty with disciplinary expertise in developing curricula, determining appropriate formats of instruction, and ensuring quality.  Handing off quality control to for-profit providers, whose express purpose is profit rather than the public good and whose track record on quality is widely acknowledged as spotty, puts the future of California’s public colleges and universities in grave jeopardy. Continue reading →

California Faculty, Teachers, and Allied Labor Groups Unify in Opposition to California Senate Bill 520, an Attempt to Mandate Legislatively the Privatization of the Curriculum

Posted by martinkich in AAUP, budget crises, corporate influence, faculty, legislation, MOOCs, students, unions and tagged with , ,

This letter has been endorsed by the following faculty groups: the California Faculty Association, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the California Community College Independents, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, the California School Employees Association, the California Labor Federation, SEIU California, and USW 5810.

April 18, 2013

The Honorable Darrell Steinberg

President Pro Tem

California State Senate

State Capitol, Room 205

Sacramento, California 95814-4900

SUBJECT:    SB 520 (Steinberg) as amended on April 17, 2013

POSITION:   Oppose

Dear Senator Steinberg:

On behalf of the faculty, staff and labor organizations of the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU) and California Community Colleges (CCC) representing the 145 public higher education institutions in California, we write to express our strong opposition to SB 520. While we appreciate the opportunity to have an open dialogue about our concerns regarding SB 520 and the adoption of your recent amendments, we remain opposed to this measure for several important reasons.

As constituents and stakeholders of California’s three higher education segments, we care deeply about access to quality higher education. Many of us teach, provide support services for and/or take online courses and know firsthand that increasing online courses is not a panacea. In fact, we believe that SB 520 as amended will lower academic standards, exacerbate the educational divide along socio-economic lines and diminish accountability within our institutions. Ultimately, we believe SB 520 would worsen the situation it attempts to address. Continue reading →

Ideologies and Strategies

Posted by martinkich in faculty, collective bargaining, unions and tagged with

In my previous post, I quoted from a ThinkProgress blog post on a bill introduced in the Ohio legislature that would have defined comprehensive sex education as a “gateway sexual activity.”

The bill was ultimately withdrawn after its proponents were forced by public ridicule to recognize that it was no longer passable. But as the remainder of that post from the ThinkProgress blog demonstrates, ridicule apparently has a short-term effect:

“However, that doesn’t mean Ohio Republicans have dedicated themselves to focusing solely on the state’s finances. The state budget also contains a provision to defund Planned Parenthood—the third time that lawmakers have attempted to strip funding from the national organization within the past year alone—that the House successfully advanced on Thursday. If it ultimately becomes law, it will ‘re-distribute’ the family planning dollars that used to go to Planned Parenthood to right-wing crisis pregnancy centers that don’t provide the same types of reproductive health services.”

On April 21, Plunderbund reported that, in this same legislative session, programs will be defunded that were enacted in 2009 to reduce Ohio’s infant mortality rate—currently the eleventh highest among the 50 states overall and the highest among the 50 states for African-Americans.

Continue reading →