Median Weekly Earnings
of Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers, 1997

World & Nation

Faculty & Staff

Professional News

World & Nation

A group of college faculty is calling on TIAA-CREF to begin "positive investing" of their pension funds.

The group has launched a nationwide campaign calling for 5-10 percent of assets in the CREF Social Choice Account to be invested in companies that are models of social and environmental responsibility. This would mean $100Ð200 million invested in such companies.

You can visit the group's Web site at: www.manchester.edu (click on "index," then "Social Choice for Social Change").

Employment in U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies grew by 146 percent between 1980 and 1995.

The growth rate for U.S.-owned businesses was 31 percent during the same period. The Organization for International Investment notes that 4.9 million Americans, or about 5 percent of the workforce, were employed by foreign-owned companies with U.S. locations at the end of 1995.

Workers employed by foreign subsidiaries earned an average salary of $42,212 a year, about 11 percent higher than workers at U.S.-owned companies.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science wants the United States to make it easier for American and Cuban scientists to work together.

A report from the Association's Human Rights Program calls on the government to change its "inconsistent travel restrictions."

The report calls on the United States to ease restrictions on scientists traveling between Cuba and the United States and to use consistent criteria when granting or denying visas.

The Association also recommends that, until policies are changed, a panel of scientists be created to review the scientific legitimacy of travel requests, and an appeals process be instituted.

Faculty & Staff

A state labor board has ruled that graduate assistants at the University of California San Diego can pursue collective bargaining.

The decision marks a clear victory for academic student employees. The UC's denial of collective bargaining rights had resulted in 25 days of strikes on five UC campuses during 1996-97. Organizers are confident the ruling will apply to other campuses as well.

The LA Weekly has reported that the University of California spent almost $2 million over the past three years on legal efforts to thwart the union organizing efforts of the grad assistants.

The article also noted that the governor vetoed provisions the state legislature had added to the state budget requiring the university to stop spending money on private outside attorneys for union busting.

Professional News

The future of remedial classes is now a political battle in New York.

The city's mayor started the war by urging that remediation at the City University be turned over to private test-preparation services. Others have proposed a ban on all remedial courses at the senior colleges.

Notes the union for the CUNY faculty: "It is long past time to remove the debate over remedial/compensatory programs at CUNY from the realm of politics."

A smaller proportion of people with Ph.D.'s in English landed tenure-track jobs last year than had done so three years before.

A Modern Language Association 1996-97 survey found that 33.7 percent doctoral graduates surveyed won tenure-track appointments, down from 45.9 percent in 1993-94.

Median Weekly Earnings
Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers, 1997