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June 1999

Advocate Online

They're talking on campus...

On the Road

Action Line

In the Know

From Capital to Campus

NEA Affiliates in Action

Thriving in Academe

Higher Education News

Money Savvy

The Dialogue

Speaking Out

NEA Affiliates in Action

Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of California System plan to join forces to produce more stringent monitoring of factories that produce collegiate apparel. These universities want the locations of factories disclosed and workers paid a living wage.

The effort is an offshoot of the Fair Labor Association, which monitors working conditions at foreign factories that manufacture American garments.

The Fair Labor Association has grown to include 60 universities, but it has been criticized repeatedly by labor unions and student groups for not going far enough to protect workers.

The FLA code is considered weak because it doesn't require public disclosure of the locations of apparel factories or guarantee that factory workers be paid a living wage.

Leaders of both the faculty union and the faculty senate of the State University of New York have taken the unprecedented step of jointly declaring "no confidence" in the system's Board of Trustees, citing the board's actions advancing its conservative policy agenda. The board actions have included attempting to supercede the faculty senate on curriculum decisions.

The two faculty organizations said they would ask Republican Governor. George E. Pataki and the legislature to replace the board's current members, even though nearly all are Pataki appointees.

The British Association of University Teachers has announced that its 42,000 members would "withdraw cooperation" from campus authorities beginning in June.

Faculty, who have been agitating for a pay increase for years, plan to delay handing in grades and boycott graduation. The union is asking for a 10- percent salary increase.

Salaries for mid-level administrators on college campuses rose by 3.8 percent this academic year, according to the College and University Personnel Association.

This is the second year CUPA has conducted the Administrative/Professional Salary Survey for mid-level staff.

Pay for the vast majority of jobs in the survey ranged from $30,000 to $50,000 this academic year. For more information, visit: www.cupa.org.

Graduate assistants at New York University have filed a petition for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board.

The grad assistants had previously demanded collective bargaining rights from NYU's president. They took the action when the university refused to recognize the union. The NLRB will now decide on their right to unionize.

The Third World Liberation Front and six student hunger strikers have reached an agreement with the University of California Berkeley that will preserve and enhance the ethnic studies program there.

The agreement includes eight faculty ladder rank positions over the next five years, with three of those to be filled this coming year. All criminal charges against more than 100 students arrested in demonstrations in support of ethnic studies have been dropped.

A new study suggests that Black men who choose a major early and take a full load of classes are more likely to stay in college.

Black male students were 37 percent less likely to drop out if they declared a major in their first semester and far more likely to complete their studies when they enrolled full-time.

Comparing Faculty Salaries, 1973 and 1998

Average salaries in constant 1997-98 dollars for faculty in public institutions on 9/10 month contracts. Details at: www.nea.org/he/healma99/.

SOURCES: The NEA 1999 Almanac of Higher Education; NCES, IPEDS Salary Survey, 1972-73 and 1997-98.