The faculty union at the University of Toledo has filed a grievance against the college's president for revealing to some members of the Board of Trustees a reorganization plan that had not been discussed with the Faculty Senate, reports The Independent Collegian, the university's student newspaper. The university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors says the president's recommendations violate the union's collective-bargaining agreement. The association wants the president, Lloyd A. Jacobs, to "fully report and explain the restructuring to the Faculty Senate in written detail," among other things, before the plan is submitted to the full board, on October 11.

Faculty members at Bowling Green State University have until mid-October to vote on whether they want to form a union, but according to the college's faculty association, some faculty members have been denied the right to cast their ballots, the Sentinel-Tribune, a local newspaper, reported. The university has denied the association's allegation, saying that five of the roughly 800 faculty members who were deemed eligible to vote in the secret election are actually directors and therefore ineligible. The bargaining unit would include full-time professors, instructors, and lecturers.

Yale University was the only college to be listed among Working Mother magazine's 100 best companies for its policies to help mothers balance workplace demands with family needs. Among the benefits noted by the magazine: five on-site child-care centers, up to 40 hours of subsidized backup child care annually, and free health insurance for employees who work at least 20 hours a week and earn less than $83,000 a year.

With more faculty members than ever before likely to have domestic partners or spouses who are also academics, the American Association of University Professors has released recommendations to help colleges understand the issues surrounding dual-career appointments and to develop policies in response.  

Among the recommendations, which were written by a subcommittee of the Committee on Women in the Academic Professions: "Appropriate faculty bodies" should create an institution's dual-career policies; professors hired as part of a dual-career appointment should be evaluated in the same way as other faculty members; and dual-career appointments "shouldn't be the occasion for increasing the number of contingent faculty members at an institution," the report says.

The U.S. Department of Justice has sued the Maricopa County Community College District following a yearlong investigation into whether the Arizona district discriminated against new employees who were not U.S.citizens but were eligible to work at the colleges, The Arizona Republic reported. According to the lawsuit, during a two-year period ending in January, the district required at least 247 applicants to produce work-authorization documents that were not mandated by law, but it made no such requirement of U.S. citizens. A college spokesman said the district would have no comment on the suit, which seeks $1,100 per violation in penalties.

Non-tenure-track faculty members at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Mich., have overwhelmingly voted for union representation, the American Federation of Teachers says. The Ferris Nontenure-Track Faculty Organization is affiliated with AFT-Michigan, AFL-CIO, which has adjunct-faculty unions at several institutions in the state. Adjunct faculty members at Central Michigan University have come to an agreement with administrators about which non-tenure-track instructors will be eligible to vote for a union later this month.

After four months of tense negotiations, Central Michigan University and the American Federation of Teachers have reached an agreement on which non-tenure-track faculty members at the institution can be part of a collective-bargaining unit. Adjuncts who teach a quarter of the time or more are eligible, according to the agreement. Instructors will now get a chance to vote for union representation. Faculty members had rallies planned for today, but they were instead turned into celebrations of the agreement, the AFT reported.

Employee unions at Rutgers University have banded together to file charges against the public institution for its decision to freeze employee pay to save money. The charges, filed with the New Jersey Public Employees Relations Commission, stem from the university's announcement this month that it would not give employees scheduled pay raises. Faculty members were scheduled to get a 2.75-percent raise on July 1. A hearing before the commission on the issue is slated for July 7.

Instructors at the Art Institute of Seattle have filed with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election that, if successful, would make it among the few unions in for-profit higher education. The union would be affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, which reports that the election should take place in four to six weeks.

A group of students at Marquette University is pushing for legal action and academic censure against the institution for withdrawing a job offer to Jodi O'Brien, a sociologist at Seattle University who is a lesbian and was the prospective new dean of Marquette's College of Arts and Sciences. The group of undergraduate and graduate students, known as the May 6th Movement (for the day that Marquette rescinded its offer to Ms. O'Brien), says it has contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Association of University Women, among others.