The American Federation of Teachers needs to "grow, and grow, and grow some more" to confront the nationwide trends that threaten higher education, AFT executive vice president Nat LaCour said in his keynote speech to the AFT Higher Education Issues Conference on April 11, 2003.  LaCour stressed the need to grow both in numbers and in political power to take on problems ranging from the breakup of the full-time tenured academic personnel structure, to attacks on faculty and professional control of educational affairs, to the widespread crisis in funding. 

"In America, people say we have the best system of higher education in the world, and we do," LaCour said.  "But it seems like someone wrote a manual on how to undo everything that makes American higher education so great and, for some crazy reason, that manual is becoming a bestseller."

Determined to halt these trends, the AFT is committed to launching a "second great wave" of organizing.  LaCour pointed to the union's Futures II report issued by the AFT executive council in 2000, which called for a "culture of organizing" across the AFT.  Increased organizing efforts have commenced in every AFT division--Public Employees, Paraprofessionals and School-Related Personnel, Healthcare, Teachers and Higher Education.  While commending the AFT Higher Education division for its organizing gains--more than 6,000 new members at 20 new locals in the last year--LaCour underscored the importance of continuing these efforts. 

LaCour challenged attendees to work in four areas in the year ahead--to invest in organizing, to convince the public and the politicians of the right to bargain collectively, to continue efforts to better their colleges and universities, and most importantly, to organize throughout their institutions.

"If we can bring about a second great wave of organizing in higher education, it will be because we reach out to every element of the higher education work force and convince them that they can get support to achieve a more productive professional life through the union," LaCour said.  [Brooke Boeglin]