In the non-stop, intensive media attention to the George Zimmerman murder trial, you may have missed another court decision, one with perhaps equally broad, if not as deadly, implications for ordinary Americans. The Iowa Supreme Court upheld a dentist’s decision to fire his dental hygienist because she was so attractive as to be “irresistible” and…
Shortly after I made yesterday’s post, I received an e-mail from the group trying to galvanize broader support for higher pay for workers at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants: http://lowpayisnotok.org/mcdonalds/?utm_campaign=LowPay&utm_medium=email&utm_source=McDonalds. At the center of the page is a link to a video at the McDonald’s corporate website, ostensibly provided as a service to their employees…
The post to which this is a postscript is available at: https://academeblog.org/2013/07/10/coal-miners-get-the-shaft-again/ Lest anyone think that what Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are doing through Patriot Coal is an anomaly in the Appalachian coal fields, let me draw your attention to the career of Don Blankenship. From 1992 to 2010, Blankenship headed Massey Energy in…
The union movement in the United States may not have begun in the coal fields, but it arguably became a major force in the American economy, in American politics, and in the national life of the United States because of the stands taken by pro-union miners in coal fields from the Appalachian Mountains to the…
I recently came across a January 2013 article posted by PolitiFact. It opens: “State Sen. Nicholas D. Kettle wants Rhode Island to become the first ‘right-to-work’ state in the Northeast–a place where workers in union jobs could choose to opt out of union membership and paying dues. “The freshman Republican from Coventry has introduced one piece of…
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education – CFHE for short – is a GRASSROOTS NATIONAL CAMPAIGN to support quality higher education. It was initiated in Los Angeles, California, on May 17, 2011, by leaders of faculty organizations from 21 states. CFHE’s fifth meeting was held in Columbus, Ohio, on May 17 and 18, 2013.…
Employment in Manufacturing Today, only about 8.2% of U.S. workers are employed in manufacturing. Even before the Great Recession, manufacturing employment in the U.S. had been steadily declining, with a loss of approximately 4,000,000 jobs between 1998 and 2007, the decade preceding the recession. Another 1.6 million jobs in manufacturing were lost between 2008 and…
This piece is reposted from the “On the Issues Blog” maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education: http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/ If you are looking for faculty-driven commentary on current issues in higher education, you should consider adding the “On the Issues” blog and the CFHE website to your links page. MOOCs may prove to…
I thought that this communication from the Ohio Conference might be of broader interest. Ohio Conference Update The Bad News: So-Called “Right-to-Work” Legislation Introduced in the Ohio House They are at it again. Despite the fact that 62 percent of Ohioans rejected the Senate Bill 5 attack on public workers nearly a year and a half ago, the extreme…