Noting that full- and part-time adjuncts, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows account for well over three fourths of all faculty appointments by the nation’s colleges, the report describes the inclusion of faculty in contingent appointments as “crucial to establishing strong faculty governance.” It argues that “the exclusion of so many faculty from governance activities undercuts the ability of the faculty to carry out its responsibilities in this area,” and leaves the dwindling proportion of full-time and tenure-track faculty at colleges “overburdened with governance responsibilities as the pool of colleagues eligible to share this work shrinks.”

Reprinted with permission of UUP. Full story available at:
http://chronicle.com/article/AAUP-Proposes-Giving/132663/

NEA delegates vote to urge the government to provide unemployment benefits for contingent faculty who are not working:

The measure, passed by the Assembly at the union’s annual meeting here last week, calls for the NEA to collaborate with its Contingent Faculty Caucus to ask the Labor Department to issue a letter clarifying that contingent faculty members who are out of work lack “reasonable assurance” of being employed by their colleges in the future. The measure calls for the Contingent Faculty Caucus to suggest language for the Labor Department to use in the letter, which the NEA and adjuncts want the department to issue as an advisory connected with the agency’s unemployment-insurance program.

Reprinted with permission of UUP. Full story available at:
http://chronicle.com/article/NEA-Votes-to-Press-Labor-Dept/132793/

In a guest editorial, the Albany district director of Workers United spells out what would happen if anti-union forces win out:

The anti-union agenda of the right — if it’s successful in this year’s elections 2012 — could leave the majority of Albany residents without decent salaries, health benefits or retirement security. Private- and public-sector workers alike must come together to ensure that the union movement survives the persistent assaults of the Republican right wing.

The primary reason why the middle class faces the threat of extinction is because of a 30-year agenda by corporate elites to make the United States a “union-free society.” First they attacked unions in the private sector, and now they have set their sights on public employee unions.

Reprinted with permission of UUP. Full story available at:
http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Unions-are-the-future-of-the-middle-class-3697612.php#ixzz216Hk2LMw

Dear UUP members,

Please see the email below from NYSUT President Dick Ianuzzi and the attached AFT press release.  I urge you to follow the link and sign the petition demanding an end to NYS’s current system of high-stakes testing that severely damages both students and teachers.

In union,

Peter D.G. Brown, Chapter President

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