POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Because the Guy Who Has Lived Most of His Adult Life in a Gilded Penthouse Knows More and Cares More about Workers This is from the Far-Right news outlet Newsmax: President Donald Trump slammed AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka early Labor Day morning, accusing him of speaking against working people and the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Randi Weingarten’s message reinforces many of the points that Rudy Fichtenbaum made in his president’s address at the AAUP’s annual meeting in mid-June: A growing and enduring middle class, great public schools, a living wage, affordable healthcare and college, a decent retirement, a voice at work and in our democracy, communities…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Economic Policy Institute has prepared a quiz to answer the question that is the title of this post. To be honest, once you have taken the quiz, I am guessing that you will not find the assessment of the fairness of your own job to be especially enlightening. I asked…
BY HANK REICHMAN Lacking any special insights or ideas that I wish to share in recognition of this first Labor Day since the infamous Janus decision, I thought I would instead call attention to some useful analyses of labor’s state published elsewhere today. So what follows are excerpts from a number of different pieces from…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH For the Labor Day newsletter distributed by the L.A. Progressive, W. J. Astore has contributed a very succinct article on labor and democratic socialism. It makes the very important point that voters have to look beyond the ideological catchphrases that focus exclusively on the supposed implications of political labels. Instead, voters…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is from the Daily Kos’s Elections Update daily newsletter: Democratic students at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University have filed a federal lawsuit against Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson over a state election law that requires voters to register at the address on their driver’s license, even if that…
BY HANK REICHMAN Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford has warned the province’s public universities and colleges they will face funding cuts if they fail to adopt free-speech policies that defend controversial speakers on campus. The government announced yesterday that it will give schools four months to design, implement and enforce wide-ranging free-speech policies. Ford had promised…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Tuesday of this week the national AAUP delivered a letter to the leaders of the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT chapter expressing concern that any discipline stemming from a report by that university’s Office of Employment Equity, which concluded that history professor James Livingston’s Facebook posts on gentrification “were not protected by the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, September 28 the AAUP Foundation and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges Education Institute (FACCC EI) are sponsoring a day-long conference on academic freedom at Berkeley City College in downtown Berkeley, California. UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky will deliver the keynote address on “Free Speech on Campus.”…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Last year, North Carolina became one of the first states to adopt a so-called “campus free speech” law (S.L. 2017-196). This law, like similar legislation that has been proposed or approved in other states, was drafted by a partisan conservative think-tank and supported by sympathetic legislators. Premised on the dubious proposition…