BY HANK REICHMAN When the New York Times first announced in April that it was adding former Wall Street Journal conservative writer Bret Stephens to its stable of op-ed columnists — which already included the unctuous moralism of Ross Douthat and the simplistic pseudo-sociology of David Brooks — alarm bells went off. David Roberts on…
BY YALI AMIT, ANTON FORD, ELAINE HADLEY, AND DENIS HIRSCHFELDT The following piece was written by these members of the University of Chicago faculty: Yali Amit, Professor of Statistics; Anton Ford, Associate Professor of Philosophy; Elaine Hadley, Professor of English; and Denis Hirschfeldt, Professor of Mathematics. Graduate student employees at the university will vote tomorrow…
BY MIKE MAUER Our colleagues at Montgomery College are in the process of learning, first hand, the value of a modification to their collective bargaining agreement that they won in the last round of negotiations. For decades, the chapter kept winning stronger and stronger protections for faculty at the only unionized college in the two-year…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On August 8, the National Labor Relations Board ordered the University of Chicago to schedule a representation vote of its graduate student employees on whether they wish to be represented by the Graduate Students United, a joint affiliate of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of…
BY AARON NISENSON On September 28, the US Supreme Court announced that it will hear a case, called Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which anti-union forces have pushed in an attempt to have fair-share fees ruled unconstitutional for public-sector employees. Currently, unions can charge fair share fees (also called “agency fees”) to non-union members for the cost of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following announcement was released today by the California Faculty Association (CFA, an affiliate of the AAUP. CFA represents more than 28,000 tenured and tenure-track professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches on the 23 campuses of the California State University system. The California Faculty Association’s Bargaining Team and Board of Directors…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The World Socialist Web Site includes a feature that is must-reading for anyone interested in labor issues. The site provides digests of labor news by region: “Workers Struggles: The Americas”; “Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East, and Africa”; and “Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.” This week’s edition of “Workers Struggles:…
BY MIKE ALEWITZ Last week, Connecticut state employees agreed to accept yet another new concession contract. To read the mainstream media, or announcements from the governor’s office, or statements from state union officials, this is a victory for working people. In fact, the agreement is a theft of epic proportions – planned in secret and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The plenary panel at the 44th Annual Conference on Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, held March 27 at CUNY Graduate Center in New York, was devoted to “The Impact of Anti-Intellectualism on the State of Higher Education.” The panelists were Susan Jacoby, the best-selling author of The Age…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN This week the AAUP’s Committee on Graduate and Professional Students issued a statement condemning the current campaign by private elite universities “to obstruct the democratic rights and freedoms of their graduate employees” who seek union recognition. The University of Chicago is one such institution. There the administration continues to obstruct the…