Higher Education

Rutgers Strike Wins Big But More Is Needed To Change Higher Education

May 14, 2023 Bryan Sacks and Michael Reagan, Labor Notes. Strategize! Higher Education, Rutgers, Strikes, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

After a five-day strike in April, members of the Rutgers faculty, graduate student, librarian, and clinician unions voted 93 percent to accept a new contract which included dramatic gains. The strike was the first in Rutgers’ 253-year history, and remarkable in that all instructional workers walked out, including full-time faculty, grad workers, and adjuncts. Rutgers is the oldest large public university in New Jersey with 67,000 students. The agreement includes big salary gains: 30 percent for the lowest-paid adjuncts in the first year, and 43 percent across the life of the contract, plus 33 percent raises for graduate teaching and research assistants.

The Pentagon Has Been Recolonizing University Campuses

May 13, 2023 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Higher Education, Pentagon, Student Activism, US military

Once upon a time getting a college degree meant reading classic literature and philosophy, learning about history and politics, studying mathematics and science, learning new languages, and debating the great issues of the day in student forums. The billionaire class and Pentagon, however, do not want young people to think critically, or to be worldly and idealistic. They want the university to function as a breeding ground for creation of a docile, technically skilled workforce that they can control, and as a laboratory for the development of new weapons systems and testing ground for those weapons that can help them dominate the world.

Inside The Bold New Push To Get Fossil Fuels Off Campus

May 13, 2023 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Higher Education, Student Activism

From late November through early March of this year, visitors to the University of Washington Career Center in Seattle would have found students sitting in a circle on the floor, some doing homework on laptops as they participated in one of the longest-running recent climate protests at the school. Their goal: to convince the UW administration to establish a policy banning fossil fuel companies from coming to campus to recruit students to work for them. “We’re trying to dismantle the fossil fuel industry’s presence at UW and their hold on the larger American public,” said Brett Anton of Institutional Climate Action, or ICA, the Washington state-based student group that organized the sit-in.

Nationwide Demonstrations Denounce Restrictions On Teaching, Book Bans

May 4, 2023 Ileana Najarro and Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week. Resist! Censorship, Critical Race Theory, Higher Education, Public Education

Teach-ins at university campuses, community book drives, read-alouds of banned books on social media, and rallies in front of the College Board headquarters in both New York and Washington, D.C. These were among the activities taking place across the country on Wednesday as part of the Freedom to Learn national day of action spearheaded by the African American Policy Forum, which has been critical of state laws restricting how teachers can discuss race in the classroom. The forum is led by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and civil rights scholar at Columbia University Law School.

Temple University Strike Offers Lessons For Academic Labor Organizers

May 3, 2023 Vince Quiles, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Higher Education, Labor Unions, Strikes, Temple University

On Jan. 31 of this year, the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) launched the first strike in their 25-year history. The decision to strike came as a result of years of organizing that largely began in 2020, after Temple’s decision to force in-person classes in the fall of 2020 led to a completely preventable COVID-19 outbreak. Striking for 42 days, graduate student-workers faced cuts to their health insurance, threats to lose tuition remissions, and more. Nevertheless, TUGSA persevered, winning a new contract that raised wages and eliminated Temple’s wage-tier system for graduate student-workers in different departments.

Workers Fight Back On May Day, International Workers’ Day

May 1, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Higher Education, May Day, Strikes, Supply Chain, Worker Rights

May 1 is celebrated around the world, and unofficially in the United States, as International Workers' Day. In honor of this, Clearing the FOG speaks with two workers who are fighting for their rights and dignity. SN 'Yeager,' a spokesperson for the Graduate Employees Organization Local 3550, speaks about the conditions that brought them to go on strike at the University of Michigan (now in its sixth week), the tremendous outpouring of support for their struggle and how the University is retaliating against them. Billy Randel of the Truckers Movement for Justice, which is holding a day-long protest at the Department of Transportation today, speaks about the difficulties truckers are facing in the US and their demands that all workers are paid for all hours worked and greater transparency in the industry.

Striking Workers At U. Michigan Are Building Powerful Solidarity

April 30, 2023 Ryan McCarty, Left Voice. Organize! Higher Education, Labor Movement, Solidarity, Strikes

The morning of April 28, I was stumbling around making coffee, checking the strike news on Twitter. It’s been about a month now since my graduate student instructor colleagues voted overwhelmingly to strike, facing down the legal and financial powerhouses at the University of Michigan. I only had to scroll for a second, then I just sorta had to sit down. There was a picture of about 20-30 people in a beer garden on a gray springy afternoon, fists raised and smiling. The message was from grad students, lecturers, and faculty from UC Santa-Cruz; they had held a fundraiser and were donating $600 to the University of Michigan grad student strike fund.

State Bills Would Eliminate Long-Term Job Security In Higher Education

April 29, 2023 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Educate! Academic Freedom, Higher Education, North Carolina, Texas, Worker Rights

Last Tuesday, Republican legislators in the North Carolina state house of representatives proposed H.B. 715, the so-called “Higher Ed Modernization and Affordability Act.” Its actual purpose is to destabilize academic jobs and exert political surveillance over North Carolina’s sixteen public universities and 58 public community colleges. Last Thursday, the Texas state senate passed a similar bill, S.B. 18. The North Carolina bill has several provisions, but the prospective elimination of tenure is getting the most attention. Under this provision, the tenure system would be eliminated for all new hires from July 2024 onward, and all future faculty would be employed at-will or on fixed-term contracts between one and four years long.

Fordham Graduate Students Walk Out To Demand A Better Contract

April 27, 2023 Jonathan Custodio, Portside. Resist! Fordham University, Higher Education, New York City (NYC), Walkout, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 300 graduate student workers at Fordham University’s Arts and Sciences school began a three-day walkout this Monday, resulting in hundreds of canceled classes amid growing frustration with the state of their union contract negotiations with the university. On Tuesday morning, about two dozen picketers marched in front of Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus in The Bronx, while others demonstrated at Lincoln Center Campus in Manhattan. Drivers sped along East Fordham Road toward Webster Avenue and honked their horns in support as the strikers bellowed, “Who’s got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power.”

University Of Michigan Graduate Student Strike Continues

April 25, 2023 Ryan McCarty, Left Voice. Resist! Higher Education, Michigan, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Graduate student workers at the University of Michigan have been winning a series of small skirmishes in their strike against the huge billionaire institution. But the university administration has shown the darker side of their corporate-style approach to negotiating with their own students, turning increasingly to violence in the face of community support for strikers. The strike, which began on March 29, came after several months of negotiations, and were often stalled by administration in moves to limit the format of bargaining meetings. When the roughly 2,400 graduate student workers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the strike, the administration immediately filed for an injunction against the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) chapter representing grad workers.

Taking Back Our Universities From Corporate Apparatchiks

April 16, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Chris Hedges, Higher Education, Rutgers, Strike, Worker Rights

New Brunswick, N.J. — Here are some of the senior administrators I did not see joining us on the picket lines set up by striking teachers and staff at Rutgers University. Brian Strom, the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, whose salary is $925,932 a year. Steven Libutti, the vice chancellor for Cancer Programs for Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, who makes $929,411 a year. Patrick Hobbs, the director of athletics, who receives $999,688 a year. The president of the university, Jonathan Holloway, who is paid $1.2 million a year. Stephen Pikiell, the university’s head basketball coach, who has received a 445 percent pay raise since 2020 and currently gets $3 million a year. Gregory Schiano, the university’s head football coach, who pulls in $4 million a year.

The UC Strike Showed There’s Power In A Union

April 12, 2023 Hazel Katz, The Real News Network. Strategize! Higher Education, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Dec. 23, 2022, members of the Academic Student Employees (UAW 2865) and Student Researchers United, both organized under the United Auto Workers, voted 11,386 to 7,097 (ASE) and 10,057 to 4,640 (SRU) to ratify tentative agreements reached with the University of California. The ratification vote ended the largest higher education academic worker strike in US history, where 48,000 workers walked off the job for six weeks. I work within the Academic Student Employee (ASE) unit, instructing twice weekly sections of 30 undergraduates each. My teaching assistant contract is 20 hours of paid work per week, but as a graduate student I do many more hours of weekly unpaid research work that benefits the university.

Rutgers Faculty Declares Strike In Historic Showdown

April 10, 2023 Tina Kelley, NJ.com. Resist! Higher Education, Rutgers, Strikes, Unions

Leaders of three Rutgers University faculty unions declared a strike Sunday, saying negotiations have stalled over new contracts for the 9,000 Rutgers University professors, part-time lecturers and graduate student workers they represent at the state’s largest university. The strike is one of the largest faculty walkouts in U.S. higher education history and is expected to disrupt classes for more than 67,000 students on Rutgers’ New Brunswick-Piscataway, Newark and Camden campuses. “Our boards voted unanimously that we will be going on strike tomorrow,” Rutgers AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan told her members in an 8:30 p.m. online meeting attended by thousands of professors and other faculty members.

University Of Michigan Graduate Students Strike For A Living Wage

April 8, 2023 Ryan McCarty, Left Voice. Resist! Graduate School, Higher Education, Michigan, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

For the second time in three years, University of Michigan graduate students are on strike, fighting for a starting wage of $38,000 per year to meet the soaring costs of living in Ann Arbor. These demands come as the University’s endowment continues to balloon, surpassing $17 billion as of last year. Graduate students are also asking for gender-affirming healthcare options, better workplace protections against sexual harassment, and an approach to campus safety that doesn’t depend solely on a militarized police force. After raising similar issues three years ago, the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) ended the strike when the U of M administration threatened legal action that could disband the union, lead to job losses, and subject leadership to arrest.

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