BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Five years ago my university, Saint Xavier, prevented the counting of adjunct ballots for the purpose of organizing collectively with the Illinois Education Association (I.E.A.). I testified before the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago. I was under subpoena and it was very intense. In the room were…
BY MARTIN KICH Not all stories are big stories, but sometimes the small stories are illustrative in ways that bigger stories cannot be because as the scope of a story becomes narrower, the implications can be seen in a more personalized way. In the Music Department at Pacific Lutheran University, changes have been proposed that,…
BY JEFF BAKER The word overload can have more than one meaning to higher education faculty. It can mean increasing class size or adding additional course sections to the faculty member’s required minimum teaching load. While many full-time faculty welcome overloads as an opportunity to increase income, they are usually a bad deal. Adjunct…
BY GILLIAN STEINBERG The ongoing reduction of tenure-track positions at colleges and universities has been news for decades, and advocates for increased tenured positions usually point to rising numbers of administrators and unchecked administrator salaries as the root cause of this reduction and the site for change. I agree wholeheartedly that administrators are overpaid and…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Last month the Professional Staff Congress, a joint AAUP-AFT union representing faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY), reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement with the CUNY administration after working six long years without a contract. The union’s executive committee and delegate assembly have voted overwhelmingly in support…
Writing for University Business, Nick Kalm and Courtney Harper advise universities on how “Strong Messages Can Defuse Campus Unionizing Campaigns.” The authors’ bio note indicates that “Nick Kalm is president and Courtney Harper is senior vice president at Reputation Partners, a communications consultancy that specializes in labor communications for universities and other organizations.” The…
COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri-national – USA, CAN (including QBC) , and MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN I realise this post may not endear me to the leadership of my university, but I will approach this with the knowledge it appears on an A.A.U.P. blog! Catholic universities such as Saint Xavier, Duquesne, and Manhattan have fiercely resisted the right of part-time faculty to organise into a collective bargaining unit.…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN The Bradley University AAUP chapter contacted the Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure on behalf of Professor Douglas Antola Crowe. He was a full-time non-tenure track instructor with twenty-seven years of service. He was recently non-reappointed without explanation, and fought courageously through various Bradley grievance procedures for reinstatement. He…
COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri-national – USA, CAN (including QBC) , and MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and a…