ActionLine NEA

A New Unionism Experiment

NEA President Bob Chase recently journeyed to Shawnee State University in Ohio to help nurture a budding New Unionism movement at the university.

The Shawnee Education Association and the university's new president are trying to begin an era of dialogue and cooperation after decades of antagonistic labor relations.

Chase spoke at a banquet attended by representatives of just about every campus constituency: full- and part-time faculty, members and nonmembers of the Association, students, administrators, trustees, and the college's new president.

Notes Shawnee Education Association President Robert Forrey: "Chase's visit to our campus appears to have opened the way to a remarkable improvement in the relations between faculty and administration."

NEA attorneys warn of serious repercussions from recent court decisions based on the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In a suit filed by NEA attorneys, a U.S. Circuit Court ruled in a University of Florida case earlier this year that employees can't sue public colleges and universities in federal court for violations of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

In another case involving Ohio State University, a U.S. District Court held public colleges and universities are immune from suits under the Family Medical Leave Act.

The 11th Amendment provides that individuals can't sue states in federal court. But it wasn't until Seminole Tribe, a little-noted but landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1996, that states began to argue that the 11th Amendment immunized them from suit under various federal employment laws.

In a related case, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide shortly if such suits can be brought in state courts. NEA attorney's are supporting legal efforts by the AFL-CIO in the Supreme Court case.

Highlights of the 1999 NEA Higher Education Conference will include an address by Richard Katz, vice president of EDUCAUSE and author of Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education.

Katz will talk about the competitive economic reality higher education faces in the "Information Economy."

His message: The Information Age presents educators with unprecedented challenges and opportunities, challenges that can only be met if educators are ready to compete on quality.

Silas Purnell from the Ada S. McKinley Community Services Center on Chicago's South Side, another featured speaker at the conference, has placed more than 40,000 minority students into colleges and universities around the United States. He'll discuss how colleges can pick up the pace.