This report compares average rates of frequent teacher absence (more than 10 days) for teachers with and without union or union-like contracts in traditional public schools and charter schools. The study's rationale is that such absences substantively harm students and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. It finds that teachers contractually…

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…

Discusses women's participation in trade unions and specific policies in Canada, United Kingdom, USSR, India, United States, and New Zealand. (JOW)

In 2005 the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, the central organisation of unions in New Zealand, initiated a Learning Representatives Project based on the British model. The Government approved an eight-month programme to be funded through its Tertiary Education Commission to "scope the project". Work began not just on scoping, but on…

Unions' current intensive organizing efforts are crucial, but they will be inadequate if they do not also transform their functions and operations. New jobs, new kinds of workers, new situations require an organizational revolution among unions. (JOW)

This article explores processes and possibilities for critical learning in the workplace, with a focus on workers laboring in what are often exploitive and dehumanizing conditions. The argument is based on a study of work-life learning of women, mostly new immigrants, employed long-term at an Alberta garment manufacturing plant. It is argued that…

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…

Unions are increasingly embarking on education and training programs in occupational health and safety for workers and their representatives. The importance of such programs is stressed by the author. Discusses occupational dangers and how worker education programs can contribute to reducing these dangers. (CT)

Discusses increasing labor problems in the U.S. Postal Service, despite attempts to change the organizational culture. (JOW)

The training received by workers depends predominantly on the organisational choices and funds allocated by businesses. It is therefore justifiable to ask whether public policy should either endorse the spontaneous distribution of training or take measures to correct it. This paper analyses the motivations and limitations of public intervention,…

The hidden curriculum of industrial education is the culture of the industrial workplace. Socialization into unions and accepted workplace behaviors are a product of racial, class-bound, and gendered assumptions in a male culture of work and must be taken into account by industrial educators. (SK)

Examines the experience of worker participation and finds that the tendency is for such programs to weaken unions and limit workers' power in significant ways. (JOW)

Else-Marie Osmundsen, manager of an International Labour Office project, "Workers' Education and the Environment," discusses the importance of union participation in environmental programs. She describes the implementation of the project in the Caribbean. (JOW)

Employee involvement (EI) activities were established by management to create more meaningful work for employees and to make companies more competitive. What is missing is a clear method to link the problems of an organization with the appropriate EI activity. (JOW)

Analyzes the practices of multinationals in the sphere of occupational safety and health and poses the question of safety and health and industrial risks in terms of environmental problems. Indicates that the future of safety and health may hinge on the adaptation and implementation of recommendations of International Labour Organisation members.…