The events in Wisconsin during February and March 2011 will long be considered remarkable in many ways. That includes the documenting of the protests. Perhaps at no previous time have so many journalists--paid and unpaid--gathered so much information about a protest movement and dispersed it in so many formats so quickly. Ubiquitous, touching, and…

During the last twenty-five years or more, administrative jobs have increased dramatically as colleges compete for students. Who could argue that academic professionals can get by without more admissions counselors or more technology experts to make sure e-mail and computers are promptly fixed, or more fundraisers in advancement to pursue needed…

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…

This article discusses the short- and long-term challenges of academic librarians in an increasingly hostile environment, and the ways in which these challenges reflect the broader struggles of faculty and professionals. What they are experiencing across the country--in the context of corporatization, the elimination of collective bargaining, and…

In 2010, in thirty states across the nation, students and faculty members protested for access to public education and against tuition and fee hikes. A common theme of the protests was the fear that rising tuition would effectively privatize public higher education, making it inaccessible to a broad segment of the nation's youth. These protests…

From 1973 to 1976 the author served as history department shop steward for the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) at the University of Wisconsin (UW), the oldest such union in the country and the first to bargain collectively and obtain a contract. When he arrived in Madison in 1971 to pursue a PhD in American history, the TAA already had a…

Efforts by state legislators to curtail collective bargaining or destroy public-sector unions, abolish tenure, and decrease funding for education are spreading throughout the country. This author states that the scapegoating and vilification of unions and teachers, however, are not new. The current attacks have historical parallels, when cries of…

Recent reductions in the amount and nature of graduate student funding opportunities sometimes have had multiple consequences. In Rhode Island, sixty patients no longer receive a hundred hours of care a week from graduate student employees. And the students have lost a unique opportunity for emotionally and professionally rewarding employment.…

This January, the Inter Faculty Organization, the union representing nearly 3,300 faculty members at the seven Minnesota state universities, took the unusual step of making an offer that broke dramatically with past practice and with typical union negotiating. The Minnesota faculty offered to accept a pay freeze while holding current contract…

This article presents an interview with Wilma B. Liebman, the new chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In this interview, Liebman talks about labor law, academics, and reversing ossification.

As in campaigns to organize graduate student employees, the way in which postdocs are classified by their institutions is important. A postdoc is no longer a student and should not expect to be treated like one. Frequently, however, the postdoc experience is little different from that of a graduate student, with perhaps slightly higher pay.…

Many observers of higher education have sharply criticized the application of corporate models of management to higher education. The best way to reverse the trend toward corporate-style management is to make issues concerning contingent faculty the center of the struggle. The California Faculty Association, an affiliate of the AAUP, has done just…

Suggests that professors can retain control over their intellectual property through collective bargaining and careful planning, but that there are reasonable alternatives to the privatization of academic knowledge that offer public benefits and the ensuing public confidence. (EV)

In "Open-Source Unionism: Beyond Exclusive Collective Bargaining," published in fall 2002 in the journal Working USA, labor scholars Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers use the term "open-source unionism" to describe a form of unionization that uses Web technology to organize in hard-to-unionize workplaces. Rather than depend on the traditional…

The issues that tend to arise in the process of developing and administering a grievance procedure are discussed and some of the ways these issues have been resolved are described. The "ethos" of an institution may be the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a faculty grievance procedure. (MLW)