GET-UP raises the volume
Labor studies programs are under attack
Private university faculty form union in Calif.
WFT fights corporate tax breaks
A heavy lift for politicians
 

GET-UP raises the volume

The Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania/AFT (GET-UP) held a number of events to mark the one-year anniversary of the date they voted on collective bargaining, culminating with a two-day work stoppage on Feb. 26-27.

GET-UP picketed at the nine entrances to the university, and classes led by graduate employees did not meet.

GET-UP is seeking to represent a unit of 1,000 graduate employees on campus. Last year, the NLRB sponsored an election on collective bargaining representation, but the votes were impounded when the university appealed the employees' right to vote.

The strike was the last in a string of actions. GET-UP's union drive went corporate in the weeks before the strike, targeting James S. Riepe, the chairman of Penn's board of trustees. On Feb. 17, lunchtime visitors to the Washington, D.C., office of T. Rowe Price - and all other passersby - were handed fliers asking why Riepe, an executive at the company, opposes the practice of democracy at the University of Pennsylvania. Riepe is responsible for the T. Rowe Price investment services division, the operation with the most public interaction.

Union activists handed out fliers at three other T. Rowe Price investment services sites on the East Coast. Employees of the AFL-CIO also pressed the issue when a T. Rowe Price fund manager came to the office to make a presentation related to the union's pension fund.

Later in the week, GET-UP staged actions when the university's board of trustees met formally on Feb. 19-20 in Philadelphia to conduct business and approve a new president. The board had never replied to GET-UP's repeated formal requests to address them. So at this open meeting, 75 GET-UP members filled the public chairs and GET-UP co-chair David Faris rose to ask the board to recognize the employees' democratic right to vote on the union question and have those votes counted. Later, when the trustees ushered to campus the newly appointed president, Amy Gutmann, GET-UP students with signs created a large presence along the pathway.

Labor studies programs are under attack

Labor activists in California are fighting to halt what they assert is the politically motivated elimination of the Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE) at the University of California Berkeley and at UCLA. One of the earliest actions Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger took upon being sworn in as governor last November was cutting the institute's budget in half. In December, he proposed zero funding for 2004-05.

The ILE has been on right-wing hit lists for a while, says Fred Glass, communications director for the California Federation of Teachers. Last summer, the Pacific Research Institute, which describes itself as a "free market think tank," made a show of targeting the ILE by giving it a "Golden Fleece" award, calling the labor institute's work anti-capitalist.

The ILE's roots date to the end of World War II, when the late UC president and labor economist Clark Kerr created a vehicle for the university to help mediate labor-management disputes. In 2000, existing and new labor programs were folded under the umbrella of the ILE, which was set up with a $6 million budget and operates as the only statewide program within the university system to address the labor and employment concerns of California's changing workforce. Reflecting the state's deficit problems, ILE's budget was cut to $4 million for 2003-04, before the new governor cut it to $2 million for the remainder of the academic year and down to nothing for next year.

The institute is best known for its highly valued annual report on state labor and employment issues, The State of California Labor, but its research and education program is extensive. It has provided $3 million for 186 research grants to 132 faculty across UC's nine campuses, and another $2 million to fund dissertation-related grants to 136 graduate students in addition to funding hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students in research and summer internships. It provides valuable analysis on topics ranging from prevailing wages to healthcare benefits.

Labor librarian Lincoln Cushing, a member of the University Council-AFT, holds one of the positions that could be eliminated. "The good news is that local campuses are picking up the salaries until the end of the school year," he says. The next battle will be getting the Legislature to reinstate the money for next year.

Some news stories reporting on the cuts have been quick to point out the retaliatory scent of the governor's action. The ILE was the only program specifically identified in the governor's list of $150 million in program cuts. In a letter to the governor in support of the ILE, AFT president Sandra Feldman asks why labor research would be eliminated while much bigger business and management programs would hardly be touched.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted in an editorial that ILE focuses on the concerns of workers, not just unions, which "infuriates" pro-business groups and think tanks. "Yet none of these pro-business groups ever questions the far more substantial state support for UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and 'pro-business' activities at other California campuses," says the editorial.

"We're the canary in the coal mine," warns Cushing. "This is the beginning of the attack" on other labor centers. David Bacon, a labor writer based in California, writes in "Class Warfare," a lead story in the Jan. 12 issue of The Nation: "If the opponents of the ILE prevail, activist-oriented programs in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri and other states will be next on the right-wing hit list."

"This is a real attack on university autonomy, whatever you think about labor," says Ruth Milkman, UC ILE director. "With a stroke of the governor's pen, the center should just disappear? If they can do this to us, they can do this to a science program on astronomy or evolution. It opens a real Pandora's box."

To help protest the cuts, go to www.unionvoice.org/campaign/uclaborctr.

Private university faculty form union in Calif.

Faculty at two campuses of Alliant International University (AIU) in California have voted to be represented by the American Federation of Teachers, and a vote at a third campus is soon to follow. On Nov. 6, the faculty voted 21-1 for a union at the Alameda campus of Alliant, home to the California School of Professional Psychology, the School of Education and the College of Organizational Study. On Feb. 18, the faculty unit of 25 at the Fresno campus voted 8-1 for the union. One week earlier, staff employees at the Fresno campus also voted to be represented by the AFT.

Faculty at the Los Angeles campus were due to vote in March, as AFT On Campus went to press.

The union, known as AIU Federation of Professors, came about as a faculty response to a situation that had been gradually deteriorating, says Harriet Curtis-Boles, president of AIUFP at the Alameda campus.

Alliant was formerly the California School of Professional Pyschology, a professional graduate school founded in 1969. During the '70s, campuses sprang up in San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2000, the institution was renamed Alliant University. The following year, it acquired an undergraduate institution, United States International University, and changed its name again.

That merger set off a reorganization that significantly redefined faculty roles and responsibilities, says Curtis-Boles. "Whereas we were accustomed to having autonomy and decision-making power on things affecting our campus, through reorganization that autonomy was stripped away. It became difficult to have a voice in things affecting our quality of life here and things affecting our professional lives."

A most disturbing problem, say faculty, was the lack of salary increases. In eight years, there was only one 2 percent increase. Healthcare costs shot up 50 percent for faculty but just 1 percent for administrators. At the same time, says Rhoda Olkin, chair of the organizing committee at the Alameda campus, class sizes increased and workload doubled. Also of great concern was a string of questionable financial decisions. For example, the Alameda campus, on the outskirts of San Francisco, is being moved to a smaller, much more expensive location near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, where parking and public transportation are limited.

With the sense of demoralization growing, the faculty set up a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, "but we felt that efforts to bring back shared governance were not being successful," says Olkin.

The Alliant board of trustees would not listen to the faculty, who sent a message through a different route - with six votes of no confidence in the Alliant president, Judith E.N. Albino, taken last summer. Last year, they decided to pursue a union and take on the inevitable Yeshiva challenge that would come with that effort.

Going through the National Labor Relations Board hearing process was a bittersweet experience, says Curtis-Boles. "The end result was that we were granted the right to unionize, but that confirmed how much our authority and decision-making power had been diminished."

The vote for a union and a renewed voice in university affairs couldn't have come at a more opportune time, say AIU federation leaders. The week of the Fresno campus vote, Albino agreed to step down, as did her second in command and the chair of the board of trustees. Those moves most likely came about as a result of a "blistering report" from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges on the university's accreditation, says Olkin.

The faculty are reassured to be facing the future from the place of strength afforded by the union, say leaders.

WFT fights corporate tax breaks

The Washington Federation of Teachers and other citizen groups are fighting state officials' efforts to extend tax breaks for big businesses. Questioning whether the breaks, which have been in place for 10 years, have delivered as promised for the state economy, they say the money would be better invested in education and other social services.

"Washington is facing a funding and access crisis in higher education," says Sandra Schroeder, WFT president. "There are too many students and not enough faculty, and the government refuses to improve the situation for ideological reasons."

The governor has pledged to sign legislation that would extend tax breaks to high-tech research and development firms. The $74 million plan is a renewal of a 10-year-old incentive package, which amounts to revenue lost that could otherwise be put to good use.

Schroeder and 30 others showed up at a rally before Gov. Gary Locke's State of the State address on Jan. 13 to voice their concern about renewing a big giveaway to wealthy corporations. The WFT estimates that exemptions will cost Washington $90 million for the rest of this biennium, and $257 million in the next.

Testifying before the Senate Ways and Means Committee just days after the rally, Schroeder explained that higher education institutions are underfunded and that, like businesses, they must remain competitive to attract faculty, students and grants. Schroeder indicated at the hearing that the money from the tax break could fund students and educators.

"You always say, 'Show us the money.' Here is the money." That money, according to Schroeder, could be invested in public higher education. Right now, public institutions are overenrolled by around 17,000 unfunded students.

Yet, rather than providing adequate funds to meet the expanding needs, the governor and Legislature are exploring such schemes as higher education vouchers and performance contracts. The vouchers would be in addition to state financial aid that students already receive. It would help cover the cost difference between attending a public institution and a private one. The performance contracts are modeled after a similar scheme in Colorado, where in exchange for agreeing to meet certain performance goals, colleges would be able to ask legislators to waive certain state regulations. "Unfortunately, these 'hot ideas' are viewed as miracle cures for all the ills of higher education. There is no evidence anywhere that they would achieve the desired efficiencies," says Schroeder.

Instead, the WFT is asking lawmakers to reinstate cost-of-living increases approved two years ago for faculty at both four-year and two-year institutions, a benefit taken away in last year's budget.

Expanding healthcare coverage A heavy lift for politicians

Although healthcare is a top concern of voters, the nation's political leaders may not be willing to take the necessary steps to contain rising healthcare costs or provide coverage for the more than 40 million uninsured Americans.

Judith Feder, dean of Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, told the AFT executive council in February that while the current political discussion among elected leaders and candidates suggests "the support is there for genuine" healthcare reform, she remains skeptical. Healthcare reform is "more powerful as an electoral issue than it is as a legislative issue," Feder said.

In her presentation titled "Health Reform: Do We Have What It Takes?" Feder outlined the escalating cost of healthcare in recent years and the rise in the number of Americans without coverage. Polls show that 84 percent of Americans think the nation's health insurance needs "major changes" or complete restructuring, she said.

Serious efforts to reform healthcare often clash with the interests of the 85 percent of Americans who already are covered by some kind of healthcare plan, Feder pointed out. To expand healthcare coverage to those who are not insured, however, policymakers must overcome the fears of the currently insured that their own healthcare benefits will be jeopardized or that they will have to bear even greater costs.

Among the 15 percent of Americans without health insurance - largely low- and moderate-income workers - 70 percent are not offered coverage through their jobs, while others find the co-payments too high to participate. Most elderly and a limited number of poor Americans, Feder noted, are covered under Medicare and Medicaid.

Feder criticized proposals to expand healthcare coverage through tax credits, tax-preferred savings accounts, privatized Medicare and other measures proposed by the Bush administration that would shift the risk to individuals rather than groups.

Instead, the system needs to be secured through more revenue, not tax cuts, as well as federal money to maintain the health insurance we have and expand the insurance safety net, Feder said. Otherwise, it will be "every man, woman or child for him or herself."