Catching up on a couple higher education-related items …
….The race is on for faculty across the UW System to join unions. With final exams and the end of the fall semester upon us, it appears it’ll be February before elections will be held.
Of course, with the new Republican leadership coming into power in just weeks, who knows what the future holds. Gov. Jim Doyle gave university faculty and academic staff the right to form unions in the summer of 2009, when he signed his 2009-11 state budget. How quickly this right can be wiped away remains to be seen.
Collective bargaining issues also remain an important topic to academic staff working across the UW System. However, there remains no indication most faculty or academic staff on the UW-Madison campus are interested in forming unions.