Like thousands of other people from around the country and around the world, this author was heartened and inspired by the tenacity, immediacy, and creativity of the pushback by Wisconsin's public-sector unions against Governor Scott Walker's efforts to limit their collective bargaining rights. And like many others who made the trek to Madison to…

Three years after Barack Obama's election signaled a seeming resurgence for America's unions, the landscape looks very different. Republican governors in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio have limited the reach of collective bargaining for public employees. The moves, especially in Wisconsin, set off a national furor that has all but obscured the…

When he was still President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, now mayor-elect of Chicago, famously quipped: "Never allow a crisis to go to waste." Republican governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, and other states have certainly taken that advice to heart. By emphasizing, and in some cases manipulating, the red ink flowing through…

This author asserts that faculty should publicly and tenaciously support graduate student organizing campaigns. She states this not only from her perspective as a staff member of the largest higher education local in Illinois, University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100, which represents faculty and staff at seven of the state's public…

In this essay, the author explains how teaching assistant (TA) unions work to the benefit not only of the graduate students who are their members but also of the writing programs that employ them. While university administrations understand unions to be bothersome at best and forces of evil at their worst, unions are essential to the maintenance…

Until public policy is modified, the only rational substitute for the right of strike/lockout is arbitration on a final offer basis. (Author/IRT)