The UFWS website states the union will have the following principles.
* We support the political equality of all faculty; we are committed to represent all faculty regardless of campus, planning unit association, or type of contract (continuing, term, visiting, adjunct, or post-retirement).
* We hold that academic freedom is a fundamental right of all faculty, on and off campus.
* We affirm that administration, faculty, staff and students are partners in shared governance on campus; we are committed to working with existing governance bodies to support a strong faculty voice and assure that Evergreen’s governance practices match Evergreen’s governance principles.
* We uphold the college’s mission to offer an excellent interdisciplinary liberal arts education to a broad and diverse population; we are committed to advocating working conditions and public funding that will allow faculty to fulfill this mission.
* We are committed to building an inclusive union that supports social and economic justice on campus, locally, nationally and globally.
* We are committed to the establishment of a strong, democratic faculty union
* We will work for vote by the full Evergreen faculty on union representation.
* We are committed to a participatory union local in which membership is local, all officers stand for open election by union members, and all contracts will be ratified by the local membership.
* We stand for transparency in procedural and business matters.
* We will work with other United Faculty unions to support public higher education.
* We will work toward solidarity with students, with other unions on and off campus, and with staff, to further our mission as educators.
I hate unions...but I have a question: Why can't a college take care of its faculty so that the faculty doesn't feel the NEED to unionize?
What do you think?
If you don't mind me asking, why do you hate unions? I myself am a union letter carrier and a trade unionist, and I benefited as a child by having a mother who was represented by a union at work (she was and still is a teacher)
I can understand having the idea that unions are corrupt (though even that issue has been dealt with over the last twenty years) but I don't understand how you could hate unions. And what do you mean by keeping the faculty happy so they don't need to unionize? It seems to me that the benefits of unionization far outweight any perceived drawbacks.
Talk to me about it at my blog: tahomaactivist.blogspot.com
Peace!
Posted by: Tahoma Activist | November 17, 2006 8:53 PM | Permalink to Comment