Posts tagged Tufts University

    News Article ● Labor Unionization Unions

    How RAs at Emerson became the latest undergrads to unionize

    January 29, 2024 // Since 2022, OPEIU Local 153 has worked with students at Wesleyan University, Barnard College, Fordham University, the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Swarthmore College to form unions. Since then, student unions at Wesleyan, Tufts, RPI and Barnard have all successfully ratified contracts with school officials, according to Heyne. “Last year was a particularly rough year to be an RA,” Drake Skelly, a senior at Emerson who is a member of the union’s organizing committee, told Boston.com in emailed comments. RAs are assigned certain nights where they are “on call” and must do rounds through dorm buildings at certain times to check for problems. Skelly pointed to recent changes that mandated the RAs walk another set of rounds at 2 a.m. on weekends as a sticking point. RAs asked Emerson officials to explain why the additional mandates were necessary, but college leaders denied the request for an explanation, he said.

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    News Article ● Labor Unionization Unions

    The Newest Union Members Are Undergrads

    December 20, 2023 // With help from groups like the Service Employees International Union and the Office and Professional Employees International Union, students consolidated support for elections, contract talks and headline-making protests. Their muscle has surprised longtime observers of the labor movement, some of whom have wondered where, exactly, young adults learned some of the finer points of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. (Part of the answer: Instagram direct messages with organizers on other campuses.)

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    News Article ● Labor Unionization Unions

    ResLife Student Workers’ Unionization Effort Calls for Job Transparency and Equitable Wages

    September 27, 2023 // They also explained that ResLife student workers are allowed by the National Labor Relations Board to start attempts to negotiate a new contract with BC if 30 percent of ResLife student workers sign a union authorization card. At this point, the RAs have had no communication with the University about unionization efforts, the Upper Campus RA said.

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    News Article ● Labor Unionization Unions

    Push to unionize at college dorms is growing

    March 31, 2023 // Colleges have been a breeding ground for illness and social havoc since the pandemic began, and much of the onus has been placed on RAs, who are appointed to shepherd the well-being of an entire floor of younger students. In the past, that has typically meant hosting events, mediating roommate disputes, and perhaps guiding an overserved first-year safely to bed. For this, RAs are compensated with free or discounted housing and meal plans. But in recent semesters, and especially since schools reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, those responsibilities have ballooned. RAs who spoke with the Globe describe being deputized as “COVID police” to enforce masking and social distance, and wrangling students whose university — or even high school — experience was stunted by lockdowns and remote learning. Several schools later assigned RAs to longer overnight “on call” shifts and additional check-ins with residents.

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    Teachers Unions Spent $22 Million Backing Massachusetts ‘Millionaire’s Tax’

    November 14, 2022 // "The MTA has coughed up $13.3 million for the so-called Fair Share Amendment, while its national counterpart, NEA, has doled out $7.2 million," the Globe reports. "Which begs the question: What do the teachers want?" The constitutional amendment is an attempt to undermine the state's flat income tax system. Chris LaBella,

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