POSTED BY MARTIN KICH As part of our ongoing contract campaign at Wright State, we have been asking our members to speak at the meetings of our Board of Trustees. What follows is a statement made by Dan Slilaty, Professor of Mathematics, at the most recent Board meeting. I think that it speaks to issues…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today, after nine days on an “illegal” and “unauthorized” strike, West Virginia teachers won a powerful victory when Republican Governor Jim Justice signed legislation passed earlier in the day that will raise salaries of not only teachers but also all state employees by 5%, the largest single pay hike for public employees…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH About a week ago, I posted Rudy Fichtenbaum’s speech rallying our chapter members at Wright State before we marched as a group across campus to an open forum being hosted by our university’s President, its chief Financial Officer, and the Chair of our board of Trustees. [See https://academeblog.org/2018/02/09/rudy-rallies-wright-state-faculty/.] What follows is…
POSTED BY THE AAUP Below is the text of an email from AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum and AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress chair Paul Davis sent on February 27 following the February 26 oral arguments at the US Supreme Court in the case of Janus v. AFSCME. Dear Colleague, Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement is reposted from the website of the University of Chicago chapter of the AAUP. Statement of Concerned Faculty in Support of Graduate Students United The University of Chicago’s campaign against graduate student unionization has significantly damaged the integrity of the University both morally and intellectually. In his February…
BY HANK REICHMAN This is a big year for 50th anniversaries, especially in higher education. In fact, 1968 was such an extraordinary year that it’s difficult to keep up. Earlier this month, for instance, I missed the 50th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre at South Carolina State University, an HBCU. This was a critical event…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Today, the University of Chicago Graduate Students United announced that they are withdrawing their request to have the NLRB recognize the overwhelming vote last October to form an AFT/IFT/AAUP-affiliated union. This is not the end of the union movement, but a tactical move to prevent the Trump Administration from overturning precedents…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Those of you who follow this blog have probably noticed that last spring I suddenly became a much less frequent contributor to this blog. The reason for my absence has been fairly straightforward. We began negotiations on a new contract in January 2017, and we still don’t have a contract. Our…
BY HANK REICHMAN Later this month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, in which anti-union “right to work” forces are challenging the right of public employee unions to collect agency fees from non-members that the unions represent. These fees have since 1977 been protected by…
BY HANK REICHMAN Fifty years ago this April the administration of Columbia University deployed the New York City Police Department to clear hundreds of student protesters from five campus buildings they had occupied for nearly a week, during which the police ran riot, indiscriminately beating students and faculty members, protesting or not, while “clearing” the…