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NEA Affiliates in Action
Of those, only 9.4 percent had employer-sponsored health insurance, and just 13 percent were offered pension coverage. BLS also reports that companies increasingly will turn to employees who work under short-term contracts, typically without benefits, to fill their personnel needs during the next few years. The Labor Party-led British government has passed new labor legislation, dismantling much of the anti-union legislation passed by prior conservative-led governments. Under the new laws, employers will be required to recognize a union if the union wins a majority in a ballot representing at least 40 percent of the relevant workforce. Unions with 50 percent membership will normally be awarded automatic bargaining rights. Even where unions are not recognized, employees will have the right to be accompanied and represented by a union official in disciplinary and serious grievance hearings where legal rights are at issue. The new law also provides maternity leave of 18 weeks for all employees and 40 weeks after one year's employment. For most of the last 25 years, the job skills of male legal immigrants in the United States have exceeded those of native-born male workers, and, since 1986, male immigrant skills have been rising, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. A 1976 law to limit visas to foreign physicians pushed down immigrant average skill levels. But they have since risen because of laws passed in the 1980s to boost the number of visas available to highly skilled workers.
In January, the state labor board upheld a ruling that graduate employees had a right to form a union and bargain with their employer. A jury has awarded $12.6-million to a former professor who sued Trinity College, charging that she had been denied tenure because she is a woman. Her department unanimously recommended the professor for tenure, but the university-wide Appointments and Promotions Committee voted against her tenure bid.
The Vice-President also announced a series of proposals to provide tax credits, grants, and other services to support and encourage lifelong learning. Gore also called on the secretary of education to encourage colleges to provide Pell Grants to help dislocated workers return to college and be retrained. Dislocated workers can be awarded Pell Grants even if their income in the previous year otherwise would make them ineligible. Email and the American Freshman in 1998 Data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA show continuing
technology accessibility problems among many college freshmen. SOURCE: The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1998. |
