NEIUPI

Jamie served as our lead negotiator when we switched from IBB to traditional bargaining…

Learning from Wisconsin

It’s time to discard the pernicious hierarchical structures that prevent faculty members from seeing themselves as part of a campus community of workers.

By Jamie Owen Daniel

Like thousands of other people from around the country and, indeed, around the world, I was heartened and inspired by the tenacity, immediacy, and creativity of the pushback by Wisconsin’s public-sector unions against Governor Scott Walker’s unscrupulous moves to eviscerate their collective bargaining rights. And like many others who made the trek to Madison to stand, march, and holler in solidarity, I was exhilarated by the deafening emotional force of the students, union members, and just plain decent citizens chanting in the capitol rotunda (“Whose house? Our house!”). Entire families, parish groups, scout troops, and tribal councils gathered in unprecedented numbers, day after day, in the snow and wind outside the building to reinforce the message to the legislature: this is what democracy looks like.

And, like so many others from the academy and from the labor movement who have written about these weeks of muscular union visibility, I hoped, and continue to hope, that “Wisconsin” will represent an irreversible moment, a moment when the labor movement began to actually move again, as unions, certainly, but also as an essential component in broader struggles for justice. The various unions in the public and private sectors have all too often been moribund, or at best reactive, since the 2008 election.

Read more at the AAUP’s Academe Online…

A positive ruling for our colleagues at UIC but it is only the first of attempts by their administration to block collective bargaining for UIC faculty.

One Big Faculty Union

July 13, 2011
A state judge ruled Tuesday that the University of Illinois at Chicago does not have the right to block a faculty union from representing both those on the tenure track and adjuncts.

While the university plans to appeal, and the case is far from over, the ruling rejected the major arguments put forward by the university and largely accepted those offered by the union. The decision found no ban in Illinois law to common organizing and rejected the university’s argument that the interests of the tenured and non-tenure-track faculty members were too different for them to organize together.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed…

In response to the Inside Higher Ed article sent earlier today, our colleague, Russell Zanca, has suggested this piece from the Sunday NYT op ed.

May 14, 2011

Your So-Called Education

By RICHARD ARUM and JOSIPA ROKSA

COMMENCEMENT is a special time on college campuses: an occasion for students, families, faculty and administrators to come together to celebrate a job well done. And perhaps there is reason to be pleased. In recent surveys of college seniors, more than 90 percent report gaining subject-specific knowledge and developing the ability to think critically and analytically. Almost 9 out of 10 report that overall, they were satisfied with their collegiate experiences.

We would be happy to join in the celebrations if it weren’t for our recent research, which raises doubts about the quality of undergraduate learning in the United States. Over four years, we followed the progress of several thousand students in more than two dozen diverse four-year colleges and universities. We found that large numbers of the students were making their way through college with minimal exposure to rigorous coursework, only a modest investment of effort and little or no meaningful improvement in skills like writing and reasoning.

Read more at the New York Times…

Interesting article from Inside Higher Education…it is lengthy but represents a good summary of our times..

Life for college professors is no longer what it once was

Union Group Stresses the Link Between Faculty Work Conditions and Student Success

By Audrey Williams June
Philadelphia

With collective-bargaining rights for faculty members under attack in several states and colleges still struggling to rebound from the recession, the sense of urgency at the American Federation of Teachers’ annual conference on higher-education issues here was palpable.

At the three-day national conference that ended Sunday, about 400 people affiliated with the union—faculty members, professional staff, and graduate students—gathered to discuss strategies to stave off the challenges they face. Sessions at the conference covered topics that included building alliances to achieve union goals, dealing with layoffs and furloughs, and gaining greater job security for adjuncts and other faculty members who work off the tenure track.

Read more at the Chronicle…