Teachers Unions and Dual Enrollment Policy in Collective Bargaining Agreements

This study explores how teachers’ unions are responding to the growing policy of dual enrollment (DE). I reviewed all available collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) of public schools in Ohio, using qualitative content analysis to look for ways that CBAs are addressing DE policy. Analysis revealed four themes. The first theme suggests that teachers’ unions are incrementally bargaining provisions addressing DE into their CBAs. Of the 586 CBAs analyzed, 160 included provisions regarding DE. The three remaining themes centered around working conditions for teachers, including provisions related to monetary compensation, existential protection of bargaining unit members, and the protection of teacher time. Additionally, district typography was explored, revealing that wealthier/smaller school districts have bargained more teacher protections for DE than larger districts with less wealth. This study provides information about what might be of interest to teachers and policymakers when reforming DE policy.

Answering Skeptics

This chapter considers whether the new labor system could work as intended in the United States and whether alternative policies could better address the country's economic and political problems. It reviews some of the likely implementation challenges the new system would face, including determining the appropriate bargaining unit in a broad-based system and relationship friction between national and local unions, and finds, based on the US historical experience, that the challenges are likely manageable. It also reviews alternatives to the new labor system and argues that while most would be helpful, all have limitations. Other strategies to strengthen labor, such as increased organizing by unions and banning right-to-work laws, are necessary but on their own would not sufficiently increase union density or dramatically increase collective bargaining coverage. Non-union policies — from increased training to a jobs guarantee to campaign finance reform — would do less to raise wages, reduce inequality, or increase political voice. These often rely on strong labor unions to work best. All told, the new labor system is practical and necessary.

Sessional Contract Faculty, Unionization, and Academic Freedom

This article explores the relationship between unionization and academic freedom protections for sessional faculty in Ontario universities. Specifically, we compare university policies and contract provisions with a view to determining whether unionized sessionals hired on a per-course basis have stronger academic freedom protections than their non-union counterparts. We then explore whether particular kinds of bargaining unit structures are more conducive to achieving stronger academic freedom provisions. Finally, we consider whether academic freedom can be exercised effectively by sessionals, whether unionized or not. We conclude that unionization does help to produce stronger academic freedom protections for sessionalfaculty and that faculty association bargaining unit structures are most likely to help deliver this outcome. We further conclude that academic freedom is difficult to exercise for sessional faculty, regardless of union status, but that unionization offers greater protections for sessionals facing repercussions as a result of asserting their academic freedom.

Academic Freedom, Canadian Labour Law and the Scope of Intra-Mural Expression

The Murray Library is the central library at the University of Saskatchewan. In January 2013, the Library Dean announced that ten support staff in the University’s library system, including several working at the Murray Library, were to be laid off. All were women. After each staff member had been individually informed by the Dean that she was being laid off, she was told to collect her possessions and was then immediately escorted off the campus property. The layoffs were part of a University-wide cost cutting measure, which would ultimately result in 40 layoffs among the support staff across the campus. The support staff were unionized, in a bargaining unit represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. The University librarians were also unionized, in a separate bargaining unit represented by the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association. In the librarians’ collective agreement was a broadly drafted provision protecting academic freedom. Among other things, the provision guaranteed the right of the unionized librarians “…to criticize the University and the Association without suffering censorship or discipline.” This provision did not contain any language which would restrict the scope of its protection to reasonable or responsible comments. This right of faculty and librarians to criticize the university leadership is known, among the various features that make up academic freedom, as the freedom of intra-mural expression.1 * Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, human rights law, and constitutional law.1 See generally Matthew Finkin & Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009), ch 5.

Contesting the Great Compression: The National Labor Relations Board and Skilled Workers’ Struggle to Control Wage Differentials, 1935–1955

This article argues that federal labor policy was a factor in causing the Great Compression, the dramatic compression of skill-based wage differentials that occurred in the 1940s, and in bringing it to an end. By giving the National Labor Relations Board the power to determine the appropriate collective-bargaining unit, New Dealers gave industrial unions the means with which to build a more egalitarian wage structure. Unskilled and semiskilled workers seized the opportunity and voted themselves big pay raises. Skilled craftsmen responded by petitioning the NLRB for permission to form their own craft bargaining units, a process known as “craft severance.” As conservatives gained influence in Washington in the 1940s, the board adopted a bargaining-unit policy more favorable to craft unions. By the early 1950s, skilled craftsmen had regained control of their wage demands and thereby helped bring the Great Compression to a halt.

Retrospective cohort study of the association between maternal employment precarity and infant low birth weight in women in the USA

ObjectivesTo investigate the association between maternal employment precarity and infant low birth weight (LBW), and to assess if this association differs by race/ethnicity.MethodsData were collected from 2871 women enrolled in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adult Cohort. Employment precarity was evaluated using a summary variable that combined several employment attributes: availability of employer-sponsored insurance, income, long shifts, non-daytime shifts, availability of employer sponsored training or educational benefits and membership in a union or collective bargaining unit. Employment precarity scores (a sum of the number of negative employment attributes) were categorised into low (0–2), medium (3) and high (4-6). LBW was defined as weight less than 2500 g at birth. Modified Poisson models were fit to calculate risk ratios and 95% CIs and adjusted for maternal age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, nativity, prepregnancy body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking during pregnancy and infant year of birth. We assessed effect modification by maternal race/ethnicity using a composite exposure-race variable.ResultsWomen with high employment precarity had higher risk of a LBW delivery compared with women with low employment precarity (RR: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.11 to 1.98). Compared to non-Hispanic/non-black women with low employment precarity, non-Hispanic black women (RR: 2.68; 95% CI: 1.72 to 4.15), Hispanic women (RR: 2.53; 95% CI: 1.54 to 4.16) and non-Hispanic/non-black women (RR: 1.46; 95% CI: 0.98 to 2.16) with high employment precarity had higher risk of LBW.ConclusionsWe observed higher risk of LBW in pregnancies of women with high employment precarity; this association was stronger among black and Hispanic mothers compared to non-Hispanic/non-black women. Findings of this study can be used to inform antenatal care and identify workplace policies to better support women who work during pregnancy.

El procedimiento de negociación y aprobación de los acuerdos colectivos en la función pública

Laburpena: Funtzionarioen lan-baldintzak zehazten dituen hitzarmen kolektiboaren teoria propioa eraikitzeko lehen hurbilketa izan nahi du aurkeztu dugun lan honek. Negoziatzeko prozedura aztertzen du, asmo onez negoziatzeko eginbeharra bete beharrekoa dela oinarri hartuta; negoziazio-mahaian erabakiak hartzeko araubideak zehazten ditu; eta negoziazio-mahaiaren hitzarmenaren azken baldintza finkatzen saiatzen da, hitzarmen hori ez lortzeak eragin ditzakeen ondorioak aztertuta. Halaber, dagokion gobernu-organoak negoziazio-mahaian eskuratutako hitzarmenen berariazko onarpen formalari eman behar zaion irismena ere aztertzen du, hitzarmen bat ez onartzeak izan ditzakeen ondorioak azpimarratuta eta gobernu-organoak onartutakoaren izaera juridikoan sakonduta. Azkenik, funtzionarioen Estatutuko iturri-sisteman duen posizio berezia aipatzen du. Resumen: Nuestro trabajo pretende ser una primera contribución a la construcción de una teoría del acuerdo colectivo en la función pública y se centra básicamente en su procedimiento de elaboración y aprobación. En él se aporta un enfoque actualizado de lo que puede ser el procedimiento de negociación, el régimen de adopción de acuerdos y la naturaleza del acuerdo adoptado en una mesa de negociación analizando a la vez las consecuencias derivadas de la no obtención de dicho acuerdo en la correspondiente unidad de negociación. También se pretende examinar el alcance que ha de darse a la aprobación expresa y formal de los acuerdos obtenidos en una mesa de negociación producida por los correspondientes órganos de gobierno, profundizando en los posibles efectos de su falta de aprobación y en los resultados jurídicos de los que hayan sido aprobados, concluyendo con un apunte final sobre la particular posición de dichos acuerdos en el sistema de fuentes del Estatuto de los funcionarios. Abstract: Our work aims to be a first contribution to the construction of a theory of collective agreement in the civil service and focuses basically on its procedure of elaboration and approval. It provides an updated approach to what may be the negotiation procedure, the regime for the adoption of agreements and the nature of the agreement adopted at a negotiating table, while analyzing the consequences of not obtaining said agreement in the corresponding bargaining unit. It is also intended to examine the scope to be given for the express and formal approval of the agreements obtained at a negotiating table produced by the corresponding governing bodies, elaborating on the possible effects of their lack of approval and the legal results of those that have been approved, concluding with a final note on the particular position of said agreements in the system of sources of the Civil Servants Statute.

Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first documents trends in numerical attrition at Sidhu & Sons, in the context of Canada's introduction of other more highly deregulated temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) operating in agriculture and those programs' subsequent growth. The size of the bargaining unit at Sidhu, comprised of SAWP employees exclusively, shrank after certain employees' attempt to decertify it, despite the fact that the Labour Relations Board (LRB) had refused to cancel its certification. Given the absence of an active attempt to decertify the bargaining unit, it is nevertheless difficult to determine how attrition continued at Sidhu. To demonstrate the how of this often subtle modality of deportability, the chapter then chronicles strategies fostering attrition in the bargaining unit encompassing SAWP employees at Floralia Plant Growers Ltd., which the union originally tried to draw into the foregoing complaint of unfair labor practices and coercion and intimidation directed at Sidhu.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.