Just in. A protest against a “Chancellor” who refuses to negotiate, who served as Jeb Bush’s lieutenant governor, who has no academic qualifications, and who was brought in to defund the state university system.
Dear Comrades,
I am emailing you all because as of 5 am this morning, the faculty of the entire Pennsylvania State University System went on strike. Our faculty union, APSCUF, represents more than 7,000 faculty at all 14 state universities, and this strike will affect more than 100,000 students. Picket lines begin at 7 am this morning, and we seek your support.
APSCUF faculty have been working without a contract for more than a year (477 days). APSCUF has been trying very hard to negotiate a fair contract, but the PASSHE System, led by Chancellor Frank Brogan, have repeatedly turned away from negotiations, and then, after nearly a year, they proposed 249 contractual changes, many of which undermine academic quality. The State System wants to cut the pay of our lowest paid professors; increase their powers to retrench any faculty member of any rank; and it has demanded tens of millions of dollars in givebacks from the faculty, especially in terms of health care coverage and costs, and reductions in professional development and sabbaticals.
The situation is complex, as would any contract affecting so many people. But there is a simple and familiar side to this story. Frank Brogan was appointed by our previous Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, a Republican who sought to defund and privatize public higher education as much as possible. Prior to his appointment as Chancellor, Brogan (who has never taught in higher education) served as Lieutenant Governor for Jeb Bush in Florida.
Our current Governor Tom Wolfe supports the faculty, and he has requested that the State System continue to negotiate, but the Chancellor has defied these requests.
Please visit the APSCUF web site where many more details are available, and you can sign a petition to tell the State System to settle a fair contract: http://www.apscuf.org. We also request that you email our Chancellor Frank Brogan at chancellor@passhe.edu to tell the State System to negotiate a fair contract and to care about the quality of education.
Thank your for your support.
Since I am unable to use my IUP email address by which I am registered on this list, I am grateful that my friend, Jeff Williams, is distributing this message. I can be reached on my gmail account.
In solidarity,
David Downing
English Department
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
dbdowning88@gmail.com
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, Not sure if you actually get this, but Penn State is NOT on strike. The strike involves the state “system” schools (West Chester, Kutztown, etc.) not the “state affiliates” like Penn State, Temple and Pitt.
Kindest regards,
Ron
Ronald L. Zigler, Ed.D. Associate Professor of Educational Psychology Penn State Abington
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Ron,
I read every comment to the blog.
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Penn State is NOT on strike. The strike involves the state “system” schools (West Chester, Kutztown, etc.) not the “state affiliates” like Penn State, Temple and Pitt.
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Just to be clear the faculty at Penn State University are not on strike.
It’s the faculty at the Pennsylvania State Universities. If you are a public school teacher and you live close to any of these universities you should go out and join them on the picket lines
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Excellent!
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From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: “Faculty at the 14 state-owned universities went on strike today and began taking up picket lines on campuses statewide and at the Dixon Center in Harrisburg after bargaining to prevent the first classroom walkout in the system’s 34 years collapsed.
The strike against the State System of Higher Education by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties affects 105,000 students and more than 5,000 faculty.
Both sides had negotiated for five days but the talks broke apart over issues including health care costs shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday. The system made a last, best offer, which the union rejected, and management said it was done bargaining for the night.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2016/10/19/Faculty-at-14-Pa-state-owned-colleges-are-on-strike-pennsylvania/stories/201610190147
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If we had Medicare for all, single payer or a true national health care system, that would take one huge item off the bargaining table for teachers, professors and workers in general. Not that it would solve this particular strike.
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Joe,
Yes, and every American worker who files tax returns with hard earned income should get as an option collective bargaining and due process. Instead, we have Wells Fargo bankers “fired” with massive payouts, after terminating 5800 employees on minimum wage.
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I am sure they received 50 cents over minimum wage. I would settle for the reversal of Taft Hartley.
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Joe
I like to say that I had the Cadillac of Cadillac plans. Yet any plan that depends on employment is only as good as the illness that ends employment. All Union workers should understand that universal healthcare takes one more item off the table that makes them less competitive. All workers should realize that as bad as Obamacare might seem , employer provided health care was going the way of the Dodo bird.
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We need a heavily published transparency about how health care is NOT part of employment in many countries — and a repeated explanation of the fact that Health Care At Work is a slowly dying system. People have to see reality to vote for change.
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I heard about this stike last night from a colleague who works at Kutztown.
Public higher education, like K-12 education, is being targeted for dismantling.
The process is aided by foundations who commission cost effectiveness reports like the one below, while making the case for “competency-based” credentials. The Lumina is a major collaborator on “transforming” public higher education –$45,188,700 in grants for this purpose since about 2009, most for competency-based/online certificates/degrees.
Lumina Foundation foundation financed this report.
Click to access rpkgroup_cbe_business_model_report_20161018.pdf
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Let us all understand that the assault on American education originated as an assault on higher education,called for by Lewis Powell. At the time 3/4 of the professorial-ship were tenured or tenure track. Today that number is less than a 1/4 with starving adjuncts accounting for the other 3/4 of the staff. I suppose some a_ _ will say they prefer not to have the voice to power that tenure affords They prefer to starve.
Perhaps I am being to conspiratorial, was David Colman’s chief asset to McKinsey & Company, the fact that Elizabeth Coleman broke up the Faculty Union at Bennington College. Is it an accident that Gates is calling for certificate programs to replace traditional degrees. An educated citizenry is a threat to the oligarchy.
On that note this petition was in my inbox today. It is not happening. We will hear about emails and sex assaults.
https://action.seiu.org/page/s/ask-about-higher-ed
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One of the key issues in the strike is one I took up, unsuccessfully, with the administration at California U of PA before I retired–the hiring of low-paid adjuncts to fill permanent positions. This saved the system money, but it undercut the quality of education. And it was unfair to teachers. I met people with ten-year-old Ph.D.s and serious publications who could not find any kind of job except as a temporary adjunct at this or that school. An adjunct gets paid a third of a tenure track professor and doesn’t have benefits. I am heartened to see my new generation of colleagues taking up this cause.
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