Academentia

and other adventures teaching & learning

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 10Apr12

Follow COCAL International on Facebook.  Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.   Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org

Updates in brief and links

Global Labor
  • Current issue of World Wide Work, Matt Witt's compilation of good labor related literature, music, film etc. Published by the American Labor Center, an independent nonprofit founded in 1979. Subscribe to receive copies by email.
  • For anyone who has ever taught a subcontracted class, see new global union principles on temp agencies: Global Union Principles on Temporary Work
Global Unions adopt principles on temporary agency work and call for good, secure jobs for all  

Campaign for the Future of Higher Ed

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CO Governor signs Contingent Faculty legislation ((tag: news, legislation, Don Eron, Sue Doe, Sunzanne Hudson, Rep. Fischer, Contingent Faculty Bill

Downsize

Just in from Don Eron, news too good & too important not to share immediately with as many #adjuncts/#contingent faculty as possible. Pass it on ...dance on tables...

Don writes, 

Colorado HB 12-1144, the Contingent Faculty Bill, was signed into this afternoon.

The attached photograph was taken after our post-signing wind-down strategy session. On my right is long-time contingent activist Suzanne Hudson, my partner in all things; on my left is Representative Randy Fischer of Ft. Collins, who wrote the legislation; on Representative Fischer's left is Sue Doe. In my left breast pocket, undetected by the camera, is the Governor's pen, one of several  used in signing this historic legislation. 

More information and pictures, including of the signing on the Colorado AAUP website

We did it

The Bullhorn, Feb-Mar2012 #newfac12

Click here to download:
BULLHORN, Feb.-March 2012.pdf (4.16 MB)
(download)

 
Attached, courtesy of NFM board member Peter D.G. Brown, is the February-March issue of The Bullhorn, the New Paltz UUP chapter’s newsletter / magazine, also available online. Most of the issue is devoted to contingency and the NFM Summit last month.

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, 23Feb12

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry, COCAL, publications, links. 


COCAL Updates in brief and links Capeheart v. NEIU: continuing free-speech/ academic freedom struggle at Northeastern IL U  ~ see below
no_free_speech.jpg 
  1. Santorum defends for-profits, Inside HigherEd
  2. Victory for union as U of Michigan Trustees oppose bill to forbid grad research assistants from unionizing, over the objections of senior administrators, Inside HigherEd 
  3. Economic numbers to die for [we are far from alone in suffering in this economy]
  4. For-profit higher ed and the Occupy movement and a new crack down on the for-profits  
  5. Pasadena City College students protest class cuts and adjunct layoffs  
  6. In case you have not heard, Occupy national congress set for July in Philly and more about it in WaPo. [Contingent faculty should be there!]
  7. Learning from Finland by Diane Ravitch  (and I wonder what their higher ed looks like too)
  8. Sue Doe of NFM testifies to Colorado state legislature about us.  
  9. Tenured professor fired at Indiana U, South Bend More on Columbia College union, PFAC, NLRB charges against Columbia Collge administration
Updates in full

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#newfac12 TWTSTW

Click here to download:
Press Release-National Higher Education Summit Meeting Links Faculty Working Conditions to Student Learning Conditions.pdf (65 KB)
(download)

= That Was The Summit That Was, an acronymization that dates me in this era of information half-life shrinkage. Considering #newfac12 Summit twitter action, TWTSTW could also be read as Tweets To Watch, remarkable for an event put on by a distinctly "tweet lite" group. More tweet now than did before the Summit. You may consider that as either progress or a further sign of the collapse of Western Civ as we have been imagining it. New Faculty Majority President Maria Maisto (@MariaMaistoNFM) and VP Matt Williams (@ohioadjunct) are giving the Twitiverse a try, as is Board member Alan Trevithick (@eValerick) to a lesser degree. There are a few others, mostly account holders in name only but a few lurking on the bank watching the twitter stream go by. 

 

Apropos #NewFac12 Summit 2012, this means anyone could, and many did, follow the Summit live online. Still missed the Summit? Catch the rerun online. The Summit Resources page has a Final Schedule/Program, Reports, Tweets, and Published Responses to NFM Summit (naked links to be embedded, expanded and annotated in another post) and other links. But this is neither history lesson nor social media cautionary tale. It's about outcomes, actions and change. 

Outcomes ~ in addition general consciousness raising/ increased awareness and revitalization, an growing list not limited to:
  • Network building manifested by increased membership, online traffic, discussions, information sharing, independent and group actions large and small as well as...
  • Widespread public sharing of adjunct stories, as yet informal and diffuse across multiple threads and locations, that could coalesce into a more organized project 
  • A Chapter Toolkit page right here (check the tabs at the top of the page) in response to a  post-Summit surge of interest in starting new NFM Chapters (a page for existing chapters is on the drawing board)
  • NFM Foundation's Framework for Change and Task Force ~ both pages are interactive, please visit and comment
  • Josh Boldt's Adjunct Project and crowdsourced data collection compiling information on adjunct pay and working conditions
  • Other new networks, projects, individual actions we can't wait to learn more about and share. (Spoiler Alert: John A Casey Jr of the splendid and influential Adjunct Manifesto and Occupy English has plans afoot well worth watching for)
  • Your own ideas and plans for change ... take Lee Bessette's excellent advice, "there is always something you can do" to heart ... and share them with us. A nifty new feature if I do say so myself.

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 21Feb12

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry, COCAL, publications, links.

1. Another book of interest: "Wayne Lanter has published a book on our strike and jailing of faculty at Belleville Area College in 1980.  We are now known as Southwestern Illinois College. The title is Defending the Citadel: A Personal Narrative, available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and others. Could you give it a plug? In solidarity, Leo Welch"

2. More on American U adjuncts union victory
3. More on East-West University struggle for recognition and a contract and against firings (and about the NFM Summit), NEA Education Votes

4. Very good summary article (in New Unionism) on job satisfaction among workers and the research on it. Nothing shocking to us contingent faculty activists, but confirms stuff we need to remember in order to organize and motivate our colleagues to fight for better conditions for us and students. Also shows how we are not so different from other workers but are very different from top managers (CEO's) in our motivations.

 

5. Review of new book (in New Unionism), Passing the Buck: Corporate Restructuring and the Casualisation of Employment, on casualized labor (like us) internationally

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COCAL Update: Special Labor Notes Conference Announcement

Click here to download:
LaborNotesConference.docx (12 KB)
(download)

The 2012 Labor Notes Conference, Solidarity for the 99% is May 4-6, 2012,  Chicago, Illinois. Joe Berry urges us to use the occasion for a contingent faculty meeting and to support local contingent faculty actions such as those at EWU. Conference Workshops and meetings begin 1 p.m. Friday, May 4, and end at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 6. More information online at Conference page and in attached document. Call Labor Notes at 313-842-6262 • conference@labornotes.org. Register online at: www.labornotes.org/conference. 

Email joeberry@igc.org to subscribe to COCAL Updates

 
Joe Berry writes,

Contingent faculty activists, friends and allies,

Please see the attached announcement for the biennial (that's once every 2 years) conference put on by Labor Notes. This year, for the first time it will be in Chicago (instead of Detroit) which is a major center of contingent faculty activity, as everyone on these lists knows already. I have been invited to organize a session on Friday, the first day of the conference, for contingent activists to get together. We can have as much time as we want and they will give us a special day rate, though I hope many folks, especially from Chicago and the Midwest, come to the whole conference. Some details are below and more will be forthcoming. Mark your calendars. thre is always a gathering of all campus workers, which is also useful for us.

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Summit Up #NewFac12!

Click here to download:
Summit Program - Final.doc (89 KB)
(download)

  

Yes, today is the day. Can't be there? Got it covered: Twitter, Facebook, live blogging, social media team at the ready and other attendees armed with mobiles. Follow #newfac12 on Twitter. Lee Bessette will be liveblogging the Summit at College Ready Writing. Check out her pre-Summit post with resource links and listing the team so I don't have to again here. 

Check @NewFacMajority and NFM's Facebook wall for introductions and links. We'll add others as they come up. I'll be here and there, dropping in on Twitter and Facebook, check mail and rss feeds. All from New Mexico...

Alas, no livestreaming video. Who knows, maybe there will be mobiles with web cams in the crowd. Never discount serendipity. Audio will be available after the event.    

 

Schedule: attached

Talking Points: plus a great late add from Gary Rhoades, visibility

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Links: education & labor news

Not all or just about #highered per se but all relevant... even the accompanying illustration but you'll have to read to the end to learn why.

 

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CFP: How Class Works, NEW deadline Dec19

Because of final exam schedules at Stony Brook we will not be able to review proposals for the How Class Works - 2012 conference until Monday December 19, so we are extending the deadline for conference proposals for one week to afford all the extra time.  The deadline for proposals is now December 19, 2011.  See guidelines below. 

The Center for Study of Working Class Life now has a Facebook page  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Center-for-Study-of-Working-Class-Life/265261583520258

HOW CLASS WORKS - 2012
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS
A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook June 7-9, 2012

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