BY MARTIN KICH On Sunday, January 13, AAUP-WSU completed a strike authorization vote in response to the WSU Board of Trustees unilaterally imposing an unfair labor contract on January 4, AAUP-WSU had already filed an intent-to-strike notice with the State Employment Relations Board, but the final decision on whether to strike was dependent on a democratic…
BY GRETCHEN MCNAMARA The following blog post, by a member of AAUP-Wright State University, which has filed an intent-to-strike notice, originally appeared as a testimonial on Facebook. We are reposting it here with the author’s permission. This is my story. And the story of many….they are my friends and colleagues. In 2007 after earning a…
BY MARTIN KICH News Release On Friday night, the Board imposed a contract on Wright State faculty that will seriously damage the quality of education we provide our students, as well as the academic reputation of the University. AAUP-WSU (the American Association of University Professors, WSU chapter) will file a strike notice with Ohio SERB…
BY LISA MINNICK On the sixth anniversary of anti-union “right to work” legislation being signed into law in Michigan, we share this letter to Western Michigan University faculty from WMU-AAUP president Lisa Minnick, who is stepping down after serving in the role since 2013. The letter originally appeared on the chapter’s website, where there is…
BY JULIE SCHMID As we approach the end of the semester, I wanted to share information about some significant wins for the profession and for higher education as a common good that the AAUP has celebrated in recent months. These successes emphasize the power that the national AAUP, the state conferences, and the chapters have…
BY MARTIN KICH In a previous post, I showed in photos the large turnout of Wright State AAUP members at the October meeting of our board of Trustees. I have also posted the remarks made by two of our officers, the president of our Faculty Senate, and a department chair, all advocating for the Board…
BY MARTIN KICH One of the biggest issues for just about every AAUP collective-bargaining unit in the country is healthcare costs. Most of our institutions are self-insured, and although good benefits packages have long been one of the salient advantages of public-sector employment in general, many of our institutions have been trying to move employees…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has stated that he is considering a run for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He has been widely quoted as asserting that if the Democrats want win again in 2020, they need to support working people in a broad variety of ways—most fundamentally by supporting collective bargaining…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH When I started to draft this post, I saw the daily newsletter from Reason, which has this teaser: “On Thanksgiving, Be Grateful for Property Rights.” Really? In the current political climate, I doubt that property rights are the rights that most Americans are most concerned about preserving. I’m guessing that freedom…
BY JOHN K. WILSON In a major victory for graduate student employees, Columbia University has agreed to a framework to recognize the Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW (GWC-UAW) and the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW (CPW-UAW) and begin good-faith contract negotiations with the UAW. The Framework states that an agreement “must not infringe upon the integrity of Columbia’s…