BY ANDREW J. DOUGLAS Reposted from the Morehouse Newsroom with permission from the author. Once upon a time a Morehouse professor tried to unionize the faculty. Walter Chivers, the current namesake of the school’s cafeteria, was a professor of sociology at Morehouse College from 1925 until his retirement in 1968. He was also a labor…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY And now for a happy story about the power of a union! Mason Richards, the new president of the AAUP chapter of the Los Angeles campus of Emerson College (ELAF-AAUP), met with me to discuss his chapter’s recent success, achieved with the help of the national AAUP staff, in securing a vastly…
BY HANK KALET There has been a strike wave across academia that is altering the landscape for those of us who teach and work in higher education—and Rutgers is poised to join the party. Strikes at The New School, the University of California system, the University of Illinois Chicago, and threats by faculty, adjuncts, and…
BY PATRICIA NAVARRA “Employers threatening to cut off benefits is not uncommon, but actually doing it is,” offered Bethany Kosmicki, Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA) past president and member of the negotiating committee, as she discussed the TUGSA strike with National Public Radio. Yet health care benefits were deactivated for graduate teaching assistants this…
BY JORDAN HARPER AND ADRIANNA KEZAR In the winter 2023 issue of Academe, our article “Reprofessionalizing the Faculty” highlights campuses that are making systemic changes to better support non-tenure-track faculty, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Penn State, and the University of Denver. These institutions provided insights into why supporting non-tenure-track faculty is advantageous for student success…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN During the recent landmark strike by some 48,000 graduate student employees in the University of California system, many Senate (tenure-track) faculty members chose to honor picket lines in various ways. Such sympathy actions are legal, but employers are entitled under the law to dock the pay of anyone who does not…
BY THE COUNCIL OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS (CUCFA) The following statement was released on October 30. Graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees are essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California, especially as undergraduate enrollments rise. Given the escalating costs of living in California, 48,000 people in…
BY JEFFREY C. ISAAC Over 1,700 of the roughly 2,400 graduate student workers at Indiana University have signed union cards affiliating with the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition with the United Electrical Workers union. The Indiana University administration has refused to recognize or even to meet with coalition leaders. And after years of seeking recognition, the…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS It is not only Colorado’s thousands of higher education faculty who stand to benefit through collective bargaining, but also Colorado’s hundreds of thousands of college students, their parents, and our state’s 5.7 million taxpayers. Why? Because when employers and employees make decisions together through collective bargaining, those negotiations require disclosure of financial…
BY HANK REICHMAN Late last night the largest ongoing strike in the US came to an end as, after ten weeks out, student workers at Columbia University, represented by Student Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers, reached a tentative agreement with university management. All details are not yet public, but it…