Defying new legislation fast-tracked by right-wing Ontario Premier Doug Ford outlawing strikes, more than 55,000 education workers in the Canadian province hit the picket lines Friday, vowing to stay in the streets for “as long as it takes” to secure a contract they feel is fair. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) launched what it called “a wake-up call and a call to arms for organized labor across Canada” after Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government on Thursday enacted Bill 28 — the Keeping Students in Class Act — which imposes contracts on CUPE members and prohibits them from striking on…
Union
Adjunct and Tenured Faculty Must Unite to Resist Pandemic Opportunism on Campus
When COVID-19 descended upon the United States, college and university administrators used the disruption caused by the pandemic to slash the jobs of adjunct faculty. Now, two years into the pandemic, these same administrators are continuing to use the conditions of the pandemic to rapidly accelerate the same neoliberal transformations they had been pushing for pre-pandemic, such as replacing “expensive” tenure-line faculty with a cheaper and more exploitable adjunct workforce. My employer, Portland State University (PSU), is just one of many schools that has used the excuse of the pandemic to place entire programs (and their tenure-line faculty) on the…
Educators in St. Paul and Minneapolis Are Preparing for Potential Strike
This story was originally published at Prism. In a Feb. 24 announcement, teachers with the Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), which includes both teachers and Education Support Professionals, announced an intent to strike. Filed with the state of Minnesota’s Bureau of Mediation, the intent to strike was authorized by the board in a vote counted Feb. 17 and provides a legally-mandated, 10-day warning to the school districts about a possible strike. The demands from both unions to their districts have been similar. They are asking for limits on class sizes, wage increases,…