Category Archives: Labor/Economics

UIUC is Balancing a False Budget “Crisis” on the Backs of Students and Faculty

Posted on 04/10/2016 by Mary Grace Hebert

Illinois has not yet passed a state budget for higher education, and schools like Chicago State have been left in the lurch. According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago State will not be able to pay employees after April. Similarly, the … Continue reading →

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The Struggle for Tuition-Free Education

Posted on 03/11/2016 by Mary Grace Hebert

By Mary Grace Hebert A breathtaking piece by Black Students for Revolution in the January 2016 Public i called for tuition to be eliminated because it perpetuates an unjust system. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has called for free college; similarly, Republicans … Continue reading →

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“I’m Not Anti-Union”: Governor ALEC and the Hostile Takeover of Illinois (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 07/08/2015 by Ricky Baldwin

  (Ricky Baldwin is a Senior Field Organizer for  SEIU 73, activist with Jobs With Justice, and occasional contributor to Labor Notes, Z Magazine, and Dollars and Sense.) Part One described multimillionaire Gov. Rauner’s stealth attack on the poor and … Continue reading →

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“Not Anti-Union”: Shaking Up Springfield, Shaking Down the State

Posted on 05/07/2015 by Ricky Baldwin

“I’m probably .01 percent.” – Bruce Rauner, asked if he is part of the wealthiest 1% Chicago equity “salesman” Bruce Rauner succeeded in his first ever election last November with 50.3 percent of the vote, spending nearly $36 per voter … Continue reading →

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A Faculty Union at UIUC: the State of Play

Posted on 08/21/2014 by David Prochaska

Since the first part of this article appeared in the last Public i, UIUC non-tenure track faculty have conducted a six-week card drive, turned in the requisite number of cards mid-May, and after surviving a challenge by UI administration, have … Continue reading →

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Privatization Comes to the Postal Service, Protest Comes to Champaign-Urbana

Posted on 08/21/2014 by Stephanie Seawell

For the past few years you may have seen headlines about threats to close post offices and reductions in postal service and delivery hours. Now, the Post Office faces another threat—privatization. Over the past several months the US Postal Service … Continue reading →

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US Labor Against the War

Posted on 07/24/2014 by Al Kagan

The level of violence in Iraq is rapidly escalating and the country is falling apart. There are calls for sending back US troops. Syria’s catastrophic civil war is being fueled by arms shipments from various directions. There are calls for … Continue reading →

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A Faculty Union at UIUC Part 1

Posted on 06/07/2014 by David Prochaska

The UI Chicago faculty union signed its first contract in April 2014. In Urbana the Campus Faculty Association (CFA) submitted in mid-May the necessary number of cards to create a full-time non-tenure track (NTT) faculty union (part-time NTT’s are excluded … Continue reading →

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Why Tenured Professors Need Unions

Posted on 03/27/2014 by Janine Drake Giordano

I once got stuck in an airplane sitting next to an off-duty pilot. As we sat on the runway for an hour, only to find that we had to change flight crews and pilots because of the long delay, a … Continue reading →

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One of The Core Union Values is Solidarity!

Posted on 02/01/2014 by Stephanie Seawell

Recently the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), the union for graduate student teaching assistants and research assistants at the University of Illinois, made a few changes to the union’s organizational structure. More specifically, the GEO added an elected Solidarity Officer to … Continue reading →

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Hidden Costs of Drought and Floods

Posted on 01/31/2014 by Gregory McIsaac

    Gregory McIsaac Climate models indicate that Midwestern US will likely experience warmer and more volatile weather in the future, with more intense rainfall and more frequent and severe droughts. Trends in this direction are already evident. The severe … Continue reading →

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Protests at Walmart in Urbana and McDonald’s in Champaign

Posted on 12/01/2013 by Public i

On this year’s Black Friday, November 29, 2013, local activists held a rally at the Walmart in Urbana that was organized by Central Illinois Jobs With Justice. They stood out in 30 degree weather holding signs as shoppers drove by, … Continue reading →

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The Attack on Labor Rights as Collective Human Rights in Great Britain

Posted on 10/03/2013 by Belden Fields

This article is inspired by the book, Human Rights and Labor Solidarity: Trade Unions in the Global Economy. This text was written by a former undergraduate student of mine, Susan Kang, who is now a professor of political science at the … Continue reading →

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Trivializing the Not-So-Trivial: the News-Gazette and Mr. Khan

Posted on 05/24/2013 by Belden Fields

In its editorial of April 23, the News-Gazette took members of the U of I Senate to task. These members had challenged the decision to award an honorary degree to Mr. Shahid Khan.  Mr. Khan, an engineering graduate of the … Continue reading →

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SEIU Holds 3-Day Strike on U of I Campus

Posted on 04/03/2013 by Public i

After 9 months of negotiating at UIUC, Building Service and Food Service Workers pulled off an enormously successful strike with 97 percent of the workforce walking off the job and 2/3 picketing over the three days. Garbage overflowed, food was … Continue reading →

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Service Employees Fight Back at UIUC

Posted on 02/24/2013 by Ricky Baldwin

“The … administration has followed a reverse policy of hiring incompetent leadership at the highest prices. If it were up to the university no hourly person would make much more than minimum wage. How are we going to support your … Continue reading →

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The “Fiscal Cliff” is Classic Shock Doctrine

Posted on 01/21/2013 by David Johnson

The “debt ceiling” and “fiscal cliff” scenarios are well choreographed dog-and-pony circus acts brought to you by the same people who crashed the economy in 2008, with the help of their bought-and-paid-for politicians from both the Democrat and Republican parties. … Continue reading →

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Building a Solidarity Union

Posted on 01/21/2013 by Anna Kurhajec

How do you build a solidarity-oriented union? Our Graduate Employees Organization has found that looking beyond the campus and using our voice, funds, and organizing skills to help community causes has made us one of the strongest locals in east-central … Continue reading →

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Motivating High School Students to Become Future Builders

Posted on 01/21/2013 by Belden Fields

In 2007, I met Tanya Parker, now the publisher of the local magazine, Unity in Action, at a demonstration in front of the County Court House in Urbana.  We were both protesting what we felt was racial inequality in the … Continue reading →

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Tax the Rich; Spend on the Material and Educational Needs of the Less Well-Off

Posted on 01/20/2013 by Belden Fields

Pat Simpson Pat Simpson is a labor educator who is active in Central Illinois Jobs with Justice As the old year drew to a close, the walls of the Channing Murray Foundation echoed with speeches on the topic of the … Continue reading →

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