Posts tagged University of Chicago
Graduate Unions: Why Student Workers at University of California, Temple, More Are Striking
March 27, 2023 // HELU was founded in 2021 in an effort to fill those shoes. At a digital summit that July, members of 75 unions and labor organizations convened to draft a “vision platform” laying out everything from their legislative commitments (like Sen. Bernie Sanders’s College for All Act) to their support of student debt cancelation. The endgame is a unified academic labor movement capable of securing public investment and reorienting higher ed to “prioritize people and the common good over profit and prestige.” To date, 130 unions and affiliated groups representing over half a million workers have endorsed the platform. The first step in realizing this vision, says Jaime, who attended the 2021 summit, is to build union density. “Transforming academia is not going to happen in one single contract campaign. We have to organize workers in every single university in order to achieve real change,” he says.
Chicago Will ‘Bargain in Good Faith’ After Grad Workers Vote to Unionize
March 20, 2023 // University of Chicago graduate student workers have voted 1,696 to 155 to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board announced Thursday evening. The NLRB said there were 3,200 eligible voters. Lee said in her statement that, “Of the 9,904 graduate students at the university, 3,287 were eligible to vote based on their current or recent appointments under the election petition” the union filed.
Worker Shortage Continues: Low Wage Sectors Hardest Hit
August 1, 2022 // 33% of women and 16% of men said caring for children or others at home has made returning to work difficult. Other barriers to re-employment were concerns about Covid, health concerns, Covid-related issues in their industry, or simply a greater reliance on others in the household, making it less critical to return to work. Moreover, three million adults retired early because of the pandemic. Almost half (48%) of those who lost their job said they leaned on pandemic stimulus payments to get by. Thirty-six percent said they used unemployment insurance benefits as a source of income and 29% utilized other government programs or incentives.
Millions of people who left the US job market last year plan to stay away in an act of ‘long social distancing,’ fanning the flames of inflation
April 21, 2022 // The dropouts were most likely to be women, those lacking a college degree, and people working in low-paid sectors, the researchers said. A quarter of those unwilling to return to pre-pandemic activities cited pandemic fears as a primary or secondary factor.