Posts by Audrey Williams June
December 17, 2009, 03:00 PM ET
Job Outlook for Language and Literature Scholars
The job market for language and literature scholars, already
weak before the recession hit, is likely to leave job seekers
chasing a rapidly shrinking pool of jobs for the next several
years.
A new analysis of employment advertising conducted by the Modern
Language Association, to be released on Thursday, projects a
37-percent drop in faculty positions advertised in the
association's electronic job list this academic year, compared with
last year. The projection is based on a comparison between the
number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009.
The decline would top last year's drop (26 percent), which, at the
time, was the steepest in the list's 35-year history.
September 21, 2009, 09:00 AM ET
Professors and Picket Signs
On the day before classes were set to begin for the current
semester at Oakland University, near Detroit, months of negotiating
had yet to yield a new contract for faculty members. So the campus
chapter of the American Association of University Professors did
what it has typically done when negotiations go down to the wire:
The members voted on whether to strike.
The result, overwhelmingly in favor, gave the union's bargaining
team needed leverage during negotiations. But the seven-day strike
that followed was anything but typical for a faculty union, for
which work stoppages of any length are uncommon.
The strike, which forced Oakland to cancel classes, ended in a
tentative agreement. Even so, local union officials and
higher-education labor experts say boycotting the classroom is a
last resort. Students' education, after all, hangs in the
balance.
"Nobody wants to go on strike, because...
July 21, 2009, 09:00 AM ET
Union of Postdoctoral Associates and Fellows Is Certified at Rutgers U.
A union for postdoctoral associates and fellows at Rutgers
University recently got the
stamp of approval it needed to begin negotiating a contract
with the institution.
The New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission certified the
vote of almost 350 people who make up the third group of postdocs
in the nation to form a union. They will be represented by the
Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters-American Federation of Teachers.
The other two postdoc unions are at the University of Connecticut
and the University of California.
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