Right-to-work (RTW) laws neither provide opportunity for gainful employment nor a higher standard of living. In truth, by ending a union's ability to charge administrative fees to employees who benefit from their collectively bargained contract, these laws aim to weaken unions and silence workers. They are designed to help employers, not workers.…

Higher education is under siege by a barrage of policy initiatives that aim to fundamentally transform the academy. The most visible and most sustained assault has come in the form of funding cuts. Nationally, funding for public higher education was 18 percent lower in 2016 than in 2008, amounting to a $10 billion total disinvestment. In many…

Collective bargaining and faculty governance are sometimes perceived to be in conflict. Faculty members will debate about whether a specific issue--for example, program consolidations or early college/dual enrollment (where high school students earn college credits taking high school classes taught by high school teachers)--falls under governance…

In recent decades, the employment model in higher education has markedly changed. Tenure-track faculty now represent just about 30 percent of the instructional faculty across all non-profit institutions. Meanwhile, most faculty members who provide instruction at colleges and universities today are non-tenure-track faculty, the majority of them…

In the fall of 2017, the University of Florida (UF) and the city of Gainesville were part of a coda to a terrible event in recent U.S. history: the violent torch-wielding rally of white supremacists and extreme far-right groups in the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three people dead and at least 33 injured. These events…

Ever wonder why union members' salary and benefits, workload agreements, and other aspects of their collective bargaining agreements, or "contracts," often remain unchanged and enforced during the all-too-common periods when public employees labor without a contract? In New York, the answer boils down to an understanding of the Public…

This year, labor unions got a reprieve: The Supreme Court deadlocked in a much-anticipated case that could have turned almost every state into Wisconsin, where partisan interests have crippled union power. The case, "Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association," addressed a previous case, "Abood v. Detroit Board of…

Given their history of socio-economic peripheralization and continued struggles for success, one would expect African Americans--especially highly educated ones--to be adept at the various forms of mobilization and advocacy, especially that of labor unions, which have not only provided them access to opportunities but also given them a voice in…

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

In recent years, issues pertaining to graduate student union organizing have been at the center of several political battles and court cases. This attention is, at least in part, due to the growth of graduate student unions at a time when organized labor's influence is receding in other, more traditionally unionized sectors of the labor force. As…

Inside every airline magazine is an ad in which Chester L. Karrass insists, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate." This suggests that the "art" of negotiation is more important than the substance of any issue under consideration. When it's time to negotiate at the author's college, the faculty union's "professional…

In 2002, during yet another budget crisis produced in large measure by the state's tax-cutting mania, Massachusetts proposed a massive cut in the university's budget. Through an early retirement incentive, the state wanted to reduce the faculty by 10 percent. No one was prepared to fight back. Despite UMass Amherst's long history of activism, and…

Traditionally, academic freedom has been understood as an individual right and a negative liberty. As William Tierney and Vincente Lechuga explain, "Academic freedom, although an institutional concept, was vested in the individual professor." The touchstone document on academic freedom, the American Association of University Professor's (AAUP)…

On February 1, 2012, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a "right to work" (RTW) provision in the state's labor laws, making Indiana the 23rd RTW state in the nation. In addition to becoming the 23rd RTW state in the nation, Indiana is the first in more than a decade to pass a law undermining the ability of unions to organize and…

Explores why faculty at Illinois State University rejected unionization. Highlights some lessons from the unionization effort by examining dynamics of the organizing campaign from the first meeting in July 1998 until the representation election in March 2000. (EV)