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.

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.