Posts tagged tuition
Boilermakers sue ex-president, demand he repay union nearly $500,000 he ‘misused’
August 3, 2025 // The Kansas City-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is suing the president it ousted two years ago, demanding that Newton Jones pay back nearly $500,000 of union money it says he misused. Filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the lawsuit says Jones has ignored the union’s order to reimburse the money he’s accused of taking.
Faculty at School of Visual Arts in New York Unionize
June 1, 2025 // Adjunct faculty make up most of SVA’s teaching corps. According to labor organizers who spoke with Hyperallergic, which first reported the news, the adjunct model has eroded both financial security and morale. SVA has cited stagnant wages, heavier course loads and the loss of retirement contributions and paid sabbaticals, as reasons for unionizing.
In unusual move, doctors vote to unionize at N.J. healthcare giant
May 5, 2025 // A group of doctors who work for both RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University voted to unionize earlier this week, union officials said. The physicians — who work for Rutgers 10% of the time and RWJBarnabas 90% of the time — were hired as “clinically focused university practitioners,” or CFUP. They are both physicians and faculty members at the state university.
Op-Ed: Union membership is now political. So can the government still require people to associate with a union?
July 10, 2024 // Since then, employees have argued that exclusive union representation does violate the First Amendment. Exclusivity saddles them with the “services” of nakedly political bargaining agents. Lower courts have turned those arguments aside mostly because of an older case, Minnesota Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, which suggested that exclusive representation was okay in the public sector. Knight seemed to say that when the government bargains about working conditions, it can choose its own bargaining partner. And if it chooses one exclusive union to bargain with, that choice burdens no one’s associational rights. But whether or not that’s what Knight meant, the decision has no bearing on private-sector bargaining. In the private sector, the government does not choose its own bargaining partner; it imposes one on private parties. And some of those parties object to their unions’ political views—views that are increasingly central to unionization itself. So private-sector bargaining raises a different question: can the government force private citizens to associate with a union when that union’s core purpose is increasingly political? (Elsewhere, I have argued at greater length that it cannot.)
Mike Rowe calls Gen Z the next ‘toolbelt generation’ amid increasing vocational enrollment
April 22, 2024 // Rowe doubled down on the demand for electricians, pipe fitters and plumbers, among others, despite emerging technologies. "Look, plumbers are not going to be outsourced," he added. "Electricians, steam fitters, pipe fitters, the people my foundation tries to assist — they have a level of job security that the article in the Journal is referencing, and it's a big deal, because those jobs have always been here for the last 20 years, as long as I've been doing this, they've been open, and it's starting to tip where we're literally turning a tanker around with regard to perceptions."
Potential Strike from CSU Staff and Faculty?
October 6, 2023 // The demands include but are not limited to, a 12% salary increase, extended paid maternal leave (16 weeks rather than 10), lactation stations, a managed course cap so the staff’s workload is not too overwhelming, improved health and safety regulations, and gender neutral restrooms. All demands have been denied by the CSU system; in fact, according to Professor Jeffrey Newcomb, the East Bay Chapter CFA president, majority of demands were not even mentioned during the bargaining process and sessions. In return the CSU system initially offered a 4% salary increase for one fiscal year, which has since been increased to a 5% later into the bargaining process.
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.
Temple withdraws free tuition for grad students on strike and gives them until March 9 to pay
February 10, 2023 // The move comes amid the second week of a strike by the Temple University Graduate Student Association, which represents about 750 members, although Temple maintains that more than 80% of graduate student teaching and research assistants are continuing to work. That would mean fewer than 150 students are on strike.
Many Rank-and-File UC Grad Student Workers Are Unhappy With Tentative Agreement
December 26, 2022 // More than two-thirds (68%) of Student Researchers United (SRU)-UAW members approved the tentative agreement, while about 62% of UAW-2865 members backed the proposal. Support among SRU-UAW voters ranged from 19% at U.C. Santa Cruz to 86% at U.C. Berkeley Lab. For UAW-2865, U.C. San Diego (73%) showed the strongest support for the agreement, while just one in five U.C. Santa Cruz voters approved the deal.
Apple VP kindly reminds retail workers that they can say no to unions
May 27, 2022 // So far, no Apple retail stores have gained formal union recognition, but in February, the Washington Post reported that at least two stores were backed by major national unions and were prepared to file paperwork with the NLRB, while at least six more stores were in earlier stages of attempting to unionize. Around the same time, Apple doubled paid sick days for both full-time and part-time workers following reports from The Verge about the struggles of frontline Apple workers.