Collective Bargaining

Academic Professionals To Conduct Survey

At a recent meeting of the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Professionals, Vijay Nair, president of the AAUP’s Connecticut State University chapter, related a story from early in his career: Nair, who had left New York for a librarian position in a midwestern university, was taken to lunch by his new supervisor and told that “you don’t have any rights here.” It wasn’t long before Nair returned east, to Connecticut, where he enjoyed the benefit of having rights bargained collectively by his AAUP chapter.

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.

From the Editor: Waiting for Norma Rae

The two main characters in Samuel Beckett’s most famous play have been the subject of much speculation. One eminent scholar noted that Vladimir and Estragon sounded as if they had earned PhDs.

“How do you know they hadn’t?” Beckett, the provocateur, replied.

Faculty Activism Alive and Well in Ohio

Faced with some of the most drastic antiunion legislation in the country, faculty in Ohio joined forces this spring with other workers and unions in a coalition, We Are Ohio, determined to win back workers’ rights in the state. The coalition led a successful effort to place the legislation, known as S.B. 5, on November’s ballot for a referendum.

From The President: I Want to Be a Member of a Faculty Union Because…

1. The faculty must be organized to advocate for its professional values, principles, and responsibilities, including its support for student rights.

2. The community would benefit from much wider and more organized faculty participation in campus life.

3. A faculty union can forge effective alliances between faculty members and other employee groups on campus and in the community.

Faculty Forum: Ways to Organize Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

Lecturers, adjuncts, instructors, postdocs, visiting professors, graduate student teachers, and others in non-tenure-track positions now constitute the great majority of faculty in US higher education. But many college and university policies were written decades ago and barely acknowledge the existence of faculty like me who work in contingent appointments.

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