higher education

  • Illinois Faculty Unions Resist University Attacks
    Nancy Traver
    Nov 24 2011 - 10:53am

    At colleges around Illinois, faculty are under siege and looking to their unions for support. They're organizing, striking, resisting cuts, and defending contingent adjunct professors. “It’s the ripple effect,” said a faculty union president.

  • California Grad Students Sit Down for Union Democracy

    Afraid you might lose the vote? Stop the count and run. That’s what incumbent leaders did in United Auto Workers Local 2865, representing 12,000 graduate student workers at the University of California. Members of a reform caucus responded with sit-downs at their union headquarters, demanding their union resume the vote count immediately.

  • California Grad Students Seek a Bottom-Up Union

    Thousands of graduate students across nine University of California campuses will vote this week on new leadership for their union. A slate of challengers is pushing to make the local more member-driven and active in the fight to save public education in the state.

  • Wave of Actions Proclaims ‘We Are One’

    Chanting “we are one!” thousands of activists across the nation marched on Monday—the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Longshore workers in the ILWU shut down the Port of Oakland in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the public sector, and students at Penn State walked out.

  • Chicago Part-Time Professors Defeat Firings

    What are workers to do when, after they file a petition for a union election, the employer declares the entire workforce no longer employed? That’s what happened early this summer to adjunct faculty trying to organize at East-West University in Chicago.

  • “Undocumented and Unafraid” Students Sit-in for Their Dream at the Capitol

    Twenty-two undocumented students risked deportation at the nation’s Capitol yesterday, staging sit-ins in the offices of five senators. After leaving the offices the group unfurled a banner in the Senate building—considered a felony—and held a second sit-in in the atrium. All were arrested by the time the building closed in the evening.

  • Berkeley Gets Rolling Before March 4

    The student-worker movement that’s emerged in California over the past five months is gearing up for a strike and day of action. On March 4 students all over the state will strike, march, and occupy buildings to keep education accessible to all—and ensure sustainable jobs for those working in education.

  • Harvard Workers Fight Layoffs
    Joshua Koritz
    Nov 1 2009 - 1:05am
    ** Print only

    In spite of a massive endowment—still valued at $26 billion despite the stock-market slide—Harvard has laid off between 200 and 500 clerical, technical, and janitorial workers, many of them union members. The school is hinting at another round of layoffs this winter.

  • University Labor Education Programs Under Fire in Economic Crisis
    Bob Bussel and Paul Abowd
    Oct 24 2009 - 1:11am
    ** Print only

    The corporate attack on workers is reaching into the academy, too, where labor studies programs are facing cutbacks or wholesale cancellation. They’re being targeted by anti-labor ideologues and by budget-cutting administrators, but they’re not giving up easily.

  • Multi-Union Coalition at UC Strikes Back at Devastating Cuts
    Jack Gerson, Tanya Smith
    Sep 24 2009 - 1:33pm

    A coalition of unions, faculty, and students gave a sharp rebuke to cuts and corporate giveaways at the renowned University of California system on September 24—the first day back for most UC campuses.