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…
BY THE CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATION The following is the text of a statement released on December 20 by the California Faculty Association, an AAUP affiliate and collective bargaining agent representing 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches in the California State University (CSU) system. We are pleased to report that we have reached a tentative…
BY HANK REICHMAN In March, more than 3,000 student workers at Columbia University in New York City went on strike after more than two years of unsuccessful negotiations over the university’s first graduate student labor contract. Yesterday they walked out again, this time indefinitely. The Student Workers of Columbia–United Auto Workers has bargained with the…
BY HANK REICHMAN A week after non-tenure-track lecturers at the University of California held rallies at UC campuses statewide in support of their union, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), there are signs that at long last the university’s negotiators are being forced to respond to these colleagues’ demands. Thanks to pressure from faculty,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today all eyes in higher education are on Georgia, where the state Board of Regents has voted to all but eliminate the protections of tenure for all faculty in that state’s public colleges and universities, thereby inviting the AAUP to make good on its pledge to investigate and, ultimately, censure that board. …
BY THE COUNCIL OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS (CUCFA) Hundreds of UC Senate Faculty stand in solidarity with our lecturer colleagues, represented by their union, UC-AFT, in their fight for better working conditions, including recognition as professionals with the right to be rehired. We owe it to them, to ourselves, to our students, and…