Unions and employers currently operate in an environment that does not support investment in skill development. However, competitiveness demands that both work and the way workers are educated and trained be radically restructured. In high-performance workplaces, participatory labor-management approaches to job-linked basic skills development are…

The 1994 edition of the NEA Almanac of Higher Education offers this year, in addition to the usual statistical data that the almanac has traditionally provided, seven articles that analyze important trends in higher education by leading scholars from across the nation. "Faculty Salaries, 1992-1993" by John B. Lee gives a detailed…

School improvement cannot be negotiated. In many educational circles, negotiation carries a negative connotation that creates a perception of adversaries, causing trust levels between participants to decline. Decisions made in an atmosphere of adversarial relationships between teacher unions and school boards are not always the productive…

Ways that workplace literacy programs can be made to work and the circumstances or forces that promote or hinder them are discussed, based on experiences in Vancouver, British Columbia, where 26 percent of the population is minority and 20 percent of the 8,000 city employees speak English as a Second Language. The story documented in this report…

Scores on the Institutional Functioning Inventory (IFI) administered to faculty at 18 unionized and 18 matched non-unionized campuses in 1980 were compared to scores at these campuses prior to the implementation of academic bargaining a decade earlier. The sample was selected from among 93 institutions that had administered the IFI in 1970 and in…

This report describes actions and results from the third year (1981/82) of a library resource sharing program authorized by Chapter 787 of New York State's Laws of 1978. It is noted that the program, which was intended to enable resource sharing between reference, research, academic, public, special, and both public and private school libraries,…

Flexible work schedules offer the promise of a low-cost option for helping people manage work and family responsibilities. Alternative work schedules include part-time work, job sharing, work sharing, shiftwork, compressed work week, flexitime, and flexiplace. Flexitime is the most prevalent full-time flexible schedule and is second in prevalence…

A study examined the Canadian-American Plant Closing Demonstration Project (CAPCDP) to assess the influence of the labor-management approach on factors critical to project success and to identify practices that enabled the labor-management committees set up under the project to work better. CAPCDPs in Idaho, Michigan, New Jersey, and Vermont were…

A search into the relationship between organizational decline and effectiveness was designed to confirm that two-year colleges are experiencing conditions of decline as perceived by faculty holding positions with two-year colleges. Attempts were made to examine the effects of decline on perceived academic effectiveness and faculty morale. The…

The need for and development of a program in English as a Second Language (ESL) and functional English literacy for nursing home workers are outlined, and suggestions are offered for others desiring to start such a program. Anecdotal information and a needs assessment, in combination with Massachusetts state standards for nursing home workers, led…

This report on the second year of the Workplace Education Program evaluates 16 programs run by 15 labor unions during the 9-month period between October 1, 1988 and June 30, 1989. The assessment was designed (1) to collect a program-wide database for program documentation; (2) to examine program impact on students' basic literacy skills, on…

College union administrators should be careful about the use of facilities, particularly in public schools, because of the potential for legal liability. Institutions of higher education today are vulnerable to being sued in regard to issues of free speech, trespass, and religion. Areas of potential liability include (1) serving alcoholic…

The report summarizes unionization activities among college faculty in the United States in 1989. Faculty unionizing continued to increase for the sixth consecutive year and contrasts with decreases in the overall unionized sector. Organized faculty comprised approximately 30% of the professoriate. Faculty unions were successful in 11 of 14…

Theory underlying marketing in the public sector is presented in combination with specific examples of marketing strategies and techniques used in college unions and student activities programs across the country. The subject of marketing is discussed under six major subject headings: (1) why marketing? (2) analyzing marketing opportunities; (3)…

This manual provides guidelines for developing and implementing employee educational programs with the cooperation of unions and management. It establishes the need for such programs by explaining the current and future demographics of the workplace, then suggests ways to determine the need for education in any particular company. Information…