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NEA Affiliates in Action
San Francisco, Santa Monica, and several smaller cities in the Silicon Valley are now considering living-wage ordinances that would match or exceed San Jose's. Our current economic prosperity, organizers of living wage campaigns note, has helped bring about more awareness of social inequities and has sparked a nationwide push for enacting living-wage ordinances. A new study by the Institute of International Education shows a record number of foreign students enrolled in U.S. institutions, as well as a record increase in the number of the U.S. students studying abroad. China leads all countries with 51,000 students in the United States, Japan is in second place with 47,000 students, and Korea third with 43,000. In 1997-98 the number of U.S. students who received academic credit for study abroad increased by 14.6 percent from the previous year. One major reason for this increase: the perception that study-abroad experience will make students more attractive to employers. The Supreme Court has rejected Microsoft Corporation's appeal of a lower court ruling that thousands of temporary and contract workers were eligible for stock options and other benefits the corporation provided to full-time employees. A U.S. appeals court had greatly expanded the number of past and present workers who can participate in a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over its employee stock purchase plan. Microsoft asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling, but the high court turned down the request without comment. The original class-action suit, filed in 1992, claimed that Microsoft treated temporary and contract workers as permanent employees except for compensation.
The university tried to argue that lecturers could not unionize because their employment status was casual and temporary, but the state labor board sided with the union, paving the way for lecturers and part-timers at other state colleges to organize. Since 1993, lecturers have pushed for a union for both full-time and part-time faculty. At its annual meeting in December, the Modern Language Association voted to endorse unionization for graduate students. Graduate students also won proportional representation on the MLA's top governance panels. In past years, the graduate students have accused the association's leaders of paying too little attention to their concerns. But Linda Hutcheon, the MLA's new president, has promised to make graduate student concerns a priority for her administration.
Students attending the new Patrick Henry College will be expected to abide by evangelical Christian principles. Undergraduates will also be required to make a commitment to a career in government or public service and carry their Christian values into the public realm. Colleges need to make adjustments to the traditional tenure process to better recognize and accommodate the needs of women, said a panel of female scholars at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago. Panelists said the colleges should not lower their expectations or standards, but need to give women more time to gain tenure, since they tend to care for children and sick relatives more often than male colleagues. Median Salary of Education Support Personnel, by Occupation and Sex
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