Collective Bargaining

Pay Raises for Nebraska Faculty Upheld

Faculty at the University of Nebraska at Omaha received good news this month when Nebraska’s Commission on Industrial Relations upheld an arbitrator’s decision to award 3.8 percent annual pay raises for the next two years to faculty in the AAUP collective bargaining chapter there. The commission also upheld an increase in employer-paid life-insurance benefits. The university’s board of regents had appealed the arbitrator’s decision, and the administration had proposed raises of 2.9 percent and 2.5 percent in the next two years.

Contract Gains for Part-Time Chapter

The Suffolk Affiliated Faculty (SAF-AAUP) part-time faculty chapter signed its first contract with Suffolk University this June, bringing a welcome conclusion to three-year-long negotiations. The chapter has much cause to celebrate. The Suffolk administration acceded to part-time faculty members’ demands that they be compensated for extra classroom time that was a consequence of a course-credit restructuring plan; this resulted in 30 to 45 percent pay raises between 2007 and 2010, with annual increases of 3.5 percent in subsequent years.

From The President: Bad-Faith Bargaining

As the AAUP moves toward implementation of its restructuring plan and the creation of a traditional 501c(5) labor union, we should ask ourselves how we can further enhance the effectiveness and visibility of those parts of our organization that are involved in  collective bargaining.

Health Center Unionizes with the AAUP

The medical faculty at the University of Connecticut Health Center voted this week to unionize. This marks the first time that faculty at a freestanding medical school have voted to unionize. They will be represented by a chapter of the AAUP.

The faculty at the health center is composed of physicians, research scientists, dentists, teaching faculty, and research faculty. These faculty members perform a variety of jobs, including patient care, dental care, scientific research, and the training of future physicians in both classroom and clinical environments.

Bowling Green Faculty Vote for AAUP Union

A two-year organizing drive by the AAUP-affiliated Bowling Green State University Faculty Association ended in victory this October as faculty members voted by a wide margin in favor of unionization. The new faculty union will include tenured and tenure-track as well as full-time non-tenure-track faculty members at BGSU’s two northwest Ohio campuses.

AAUP Union Chapter Wins “Fair Share”

The Emerson College AAUP chapter, which represents the part-time faculty in collective bargaining, scored a decisive victory in the fall when it announced that it had met the deadline to achieve the 58 percent membership required to trigger the fair-share provision of its latest contract. The chapter, called the Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College, achieved 66.5 percent membership among nearly 220 part-time faculty members— almost 10 percent more than necessary to activate fair share.

Angry Badgers

The protests in Wisconsin have helped revive an old Progressive state of being: "badgerness" has been reinvented for the twenty-first century.

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.

Academic Librarians in the Breach

Even in the heat of the attacks on collective bargaining, we need to understand the distinct issues that smaller groups face.

New Faculty Union Under Attack

On April 29, the University of Illinois Chicago United Faculty, a group jointly affiliated with the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers, delivered hundreds of signed union authorization cards to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board—more than enough to certify the union under Illinois law. The faculty voted to have one union represent tenured, tenure-track, and contingent faculty who have appointments of at least 51 percent time.

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