Posts tagged professors
Anne Arundel Community College professors unionize for more clarity, structure
April 1, 2025 // The union, called Riverhawk Educators United, earned recognition from the state employee relations board late last week with 62% of faculty in support. Now, the group will start negotiating its first official contract. Nicole Williams, chair of the human services department, said she’s hoping the union will bring more structure and clarity. “We have policies, but we need more policies. There's structure, but we need more structure,” Williams told WYPR.
Teacher unions sue Trump over $400 million Columbia University research cuts
March 26, 2025 // The AFT has also sued Trump over his efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump and AFT President Randi Weingarten have long clashed over the rule of unions in the education system, dating back to Trump's first presidency, when the two fought over return-to-class plans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MD bill may give faculty the right to unionize
March 11, 2025 // The bill includes full-time or part-time faculty, and those who are either on tenure or non-tenure tracks. Foley added faculty at Maryland community colleges are already able to organize unions. Since 2012, the number of unionized faculty across the country has grown more than 7%, with more than a quarter of all faculty belonging to a union. More than 80% of unionized college faculty members are nontenured. Foley, a former vice president of the Communications Workers of America, said despite perceptions, unions are not just for blue collar workers.
NEW YORK: Hochul Report Whitewashes Teachers Union Antisemitism; Commentary
October 31, 2024 // Months before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, a CUNY Law commencement speaker delivered what one commentator described as a “Nuremburg-style screed” against Israel, accusing it of murder and lynchings. CUNY’s administration called the speech “unacceptable.” Meanwhile, the PSC, led by Davis, demanded that CUNY — not the speaker — retract its statement. After the Oct. 7 attacks, the union allowed “CUNY4Palestine” to promote anti-Israel rallies on the union’s email list and later condemned Columbia University for dispersing a pro-Hamas student encampment.
Canvassers respond to anti-Semitic demonstrations at UCLA
October 18, 2024 // While we are always looking to be respectful and informative, our canvassers have also been met with extremely vulgar attacks from none other than AFSMCE 3299 shop stewards. Just yesterday the pair was castigated for simply handing out literature and trying to engage with workers in front of the medical center. Profanities and threats of attacks were met with a polite, yet bold, resistance.
Labor unions lose 63,000 members under new state law
September 5, 2024 // The largest losses of union representation in Florida due to SB 256 come from those employed by the state government — more than 43,000 state employees have lost their unions. The second largest loss of union representation comes from university and college professors, specifically unions that represent adjunct and part-time faculty. Municipal employees from cities large and small follow. WLRN is using public records to maintain a database that shows the full extent of the fallout of the law.
Beleaguered CUNY Professors Appeal to SCOTUS for Relief from Union They Claim Is Antisemitic
August 6, 2024 // The cert petition says the heart of their complaint is the question, “Can the government force Jewish professors to accept the representation of an advocacy group they rightly consider to be anti-Semitic?” They claim that various Supreme Court rulings, including Janus and NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., articulate their First Amendment right to “eschew association for expressive purposes” and “boycott entities to express a message.” The petition charges the lower courts have misinterpreted Knight, saying that ruling “did not sanction a state forcing Jewish faculty members who are ardent Zionists to accept the representation of a union that supports policies they consider anti-Israel,” and urges the Court to grant to petition to “clarify Knight and make clear that the First Amendment protects individuals’ right to dissociate themselves from advocacy groups that support policies contrary to their deeply held beliefs.”
CUNY profs appeal to SCOTUS to leave anti-Semitic public sector union
July 31, 2024 // The National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW) and the Fairness Center, which are representing the professors, recently appealed to the Supreme Court to hear the case. The groups argue that compulsory union representation violates citizens’ right to freedom of association. The professors each resigned their membership from the union, CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), following that group’s issuance of a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel resolution in 2021.
CUNY Professors Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case Challenging Forced Association with Antisemitism-Linked Union
July 23, 2024 // “Knight did not sanction a state forcing Jewish faculty members who are ardent Zionists to accept the representation of a union that supports policies they consider anti-Israel,” the petition continues. “The Court should grant this petition to clarify Knight and make clear that the First Amendment protects individuals’ right to dissociate themselves from advocacy groups that support policies contrary to their deeply held beliefs.”