BY MARTIN KICH This is how the official Trump campaign site marked Labor Day: Trump did, however, tweet about his meeting with union leaders at an American Legion Post in Youngstown–after he bragged about some very selectively highlighted poll numbers: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Heading to Youngstown, Ohio now-some great polls. #AmericaFirst Donald J.…
BY DEBORAH MUTNICK Day 3 of the LIU lockout. Labor Day. I have been locked out of Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus by an administration that makes my colleagues and me feel like poster children for the neoliberal corporatization of higher education. We have lost our health care and other benefits, our pay, and our…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This post originally appeared on the blog Talking Union [https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/]. Paul Garver, the editor of that blog, on which some of my labor-related posts to this blog have been re-posted, has asked that I disseminate it as widely as possible. As the note at the bottom makes clear, it had already…
BY HANK REICHMAN The horrific Labor Day lockout at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus has emerged, for the moment, as a front-line battleground in the fight for the future of higher education. If you haven’t yet joined the letters campaign in support of the LIU faculty initiated by the American Federation of Teachers, please do…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Job Growth and Good-Paying Job Growth in U.S. Urban Areas The “right-to-work” states are indicated in red, and the pro-labor states in white: If you compare that map with the following map, showing the raw job growth in U.S. urban areas, you’ll see that the greatest raw job growth…
BY MARTIN KICH Eastern Gateway Community College is located in east-central Ohio, at the northern end of Ohio’s Appalachian region, where the population growth has remained flat or the populations has actually been declining. Beyond the basic population numbers, the population is aging, and the fracking boom has not replaced the jobs lost with the…
BY DEBORAH MUTNICK Guest blogger Deborah Mutnick is a long-time professor at Long Island University’s Brooklyn, NY campus. As of 12:00 a.m., Saturday, September 3, my colleagues and I were locked out of our University in the midst of contract negotiations between our faculty union and management. The letter I got from the administration told…
BY AARON BARLOW There’s a short piece on Inside Higher Ed today that says the Long Island University at Brooklyn administration will lock out faculty members starting at midnight “unless the faculty union immediately ratifies a contract and that it has lined up new faculty members to teach.” This is all sorts of crazy. One…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following is reposted with the author’s permission from the Remaking the University blog. Michael Meranze is Professor of History at UCLA. As you may know, a 3-1 majority of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Columbia University’s Teaching Assistants (known at Columbia as Instructional Officers) are to be considered “employees” under…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled in the Columbia University case that student employees at private universities have the right to organize unions to bargain collectively over the terms of their employment. The lengthy and carefully argued ruling overturned a 2004 decision in Brown University that denied such rights…