There was some nice coverage of the UML Adjunct Union protest today.

LOWELL (CBS) – Adjunct Professors at UMass Lowell are spreading their message with a protest today: They feel the UMass Board of Trustees are operating with a Wall Street frame of mind.

The adjunct professors are now in contract negotiations, and are seizing on frustrations felt by many about recent reports of the salary for outgoing UMass President Jack Wilson’s sabbatical. The Trustees approved a $425,000 sabbatical salary for this year, and then afterward at $261,000 salary for his work teaching and working as a top academic administrator at UMass Lowell.

The average full time professor salary at UMass Lowell is $130,000.

Tess George, an adjunct professor in business communication, says, “We’d like taxpayers students and parents to take a look at where the university’s financial priorities are.” She says, “I question the priorities. That’s an exorbitant salary being paid to an ex-president while we have an acting president and adjunct faculty are paid $3,500 per course with no benefits, no security.”

LOWELL — A group of UMass Lowell professors who are upset with the financial package of former President Jack Wilson will protest the deal at a rally at the UMass Inn & Conference Center tomorrow.

The protest is being organized by adjunct professors at the university, who say Wilson’s deal is out of whack with their salaries, which they say have not been increased in a decade.

Wilson is receiving his $425,000 annual presidential salary during a year’s sabbatical, and will be paid $261,000, nearly triple the senior faculty average, when he begins teaching at UMass Lowell later this year.

Nural Aman, an adjunct economics professor at UMass Lowell, called Wilson’s deal “an insult to the parents, student and faculty” at the university.

“Parents are struggling to send their children to college,” wrote Aman, in a letter to The Sun. “Students are working longer hours than ever to pay for ever-increasing tuition and fees.”

Aman, who is also a full-time professor at UMass Boston, said the university’s adjunct professors make $3,500 to $4,500 per course, with no benefits or job security. He said the university’s administration should not be “permitted to run the university like a third-world sweat shop” by denying raises to adjunct faculty, while doling out “excessive bonus paychecks” to Wilson.

“(UMass Lowell) is our university, a state institution paid for with our taxes and established to serve us, the citizens of the commonwealth,” wrote Aman. “It is time to call the administration to task.”

Aman expects about 15 to 20 people to show up at the rally, which was scheduled to coincide with the university’s Online and Continuing Education open house. He said the demonstrators will pass out leaflets between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., detailing their gripes to students and their parents.

A UMass Lowell spokesperson did not return a call seeking comment.

[…]

(via UMass salary spurs Lowell protest - Lowell Sun Online)

A public school teacher, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

(via a FB friend)

Um, Glenn, your contradictions are showing.

BY ANDREW LEONARD

It’s Glenn Beck’s worst nightmare — firefighters invading government buildings in a spine-tingling display of union solidarity. Don’t they know the Wisconsin protests area Muslim Brotherhood plot to create a one-world Marxist government?

As the on-scene narrator notes — firefighters are exempt from Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from state employees, but that doesn’t seem to have split union ranks in Wisconsin.

Is the sleeping giant awakening? This should be a caution to those who think they can so cavalierly ignore the social contract.

“I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment,” shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into the night.Where Tuesday’s mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, Wednesday’s mid-day rally drew 30,000,according to estimates by organizers. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of twenty-seven years on the city’s force, said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol—and he noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was “packed.”

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sitasays:

Thank The Labor Movement

thanks Joost.

Isn’t the Lawrence Fire Department too big to fail, or is it wrapped in a Somebody Else’s Problem field? I predicted that Lawrence’s inability to provide adequate public safety would increase its reliance on other municipalities. This is a regional problem: we all live downwind.

Yesterday, the department had a total of 15 firefighters working, which is less than half the number on duty per shift several years ago, Marsh said.

Since the layoffs, calling on neighboring fire departments for additional support — once a backup option — has become the norm, he said.

“We’ll respond to Lowell three, four times a year — it’s a system that’s never supposed to be abused,’’ Marsh said. “Now we’re abusing it. Right now, we rely on them three, four times this week.’’

When the layoffs were announced, Acting Chief Brian J. Murphy told the Globe the budget cuts pose an “imminent danger’’ to the safety of the city’s 70,000 residents.

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