Part-time faculty at Northeastern University narrowly voted to form a union on Thursday, giving momentum to a movement that appears to be picking up steam in Boston and across the country.
The union-organizing effort is spearheaded nationally by the Service Employees International Union, which has won victories locally at Tufts and Lesley universities (and a 100-98 vote loss at Bentley University) and is mounting citywide campaigns across the country in such cities as Seattle, Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC. The union previously has been active in organizing health care and janitorial workers.
At Northeastern, 63 percent of those eligible to vote participated in the election and those in favor of forming a union prevailed by a margin of 37 votes. The SEIU is hoping to organize schools across the Greater Boston area and eventually negotiate a citywide labor agreement.
The union’s rallying cry is simple. Over the last 40 years, the percentage of part-time faculty members at colleges and universities across the nation has grown from 30 percent to more than 50 percent. Part-time faculty across the nation are paid on average $3,000 per three-credit course and, according to the SEIU, only a fifth of them receive health insurance. Even fewer receive retirement benefits.
In a Globe op-ed, Northeastern adjunct Susan McNamara said “working conditions have deteriorated to the point where they are intolerable.”
On SEIU’s campaign website, Adjunct Action, the union says part-time faculty at most colleges face low pay and no benefits or job security. “Being a university professor, once the quintessential middle-class job, has become a low-wage one,” the website says.
–BRUCE MOHL
BEACON HILL
Gov. Deval Patrick signs into law legislation outlawing the handcuffing of women prisoners to hospital beds during childbirth, the Associated Press reports.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera files a $78 million budget that holds property taxes flat, hires 10 more police officers, and cuts total spending by $1.1 million. Most of the revenue for education and public safety is coming from the state, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
A Globe editorial says Boston city councilors Bill Linehan, Steve Murphy, and Sal LaMatinna “should be ashamed” of themselves for not supporting a resolution honoring the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in schools.
Acting Boston Redevelopment Authority chief Brian Golden works to blunt the cost of vacation and sick time buyouts.
CASINOS
Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby says there is “absolutely no reason on earth” for him to resign, CommonWealth reports.
East Boston casino opponents allege collusion between the state gaming commission and Mohegan Sun. If you think the Gaming Commission is biased, keep in mind that the commission sees its job as getting the casino industry in Massachusetts up and running. Read the Back Story in CommonWealth.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The FCC gives initial approval to new Internet traffic rules, NPR reports.
The police chief in Wolfboro, New Hampshire, calls President Obama the N-word and refuses to apologize for doing so, the Concord Monitor reports.
Governing reports on Sen. Edward Markey’s love affair with BABs.
It turns out that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t so forthright during his epic Bridgegate press conference.
ELECTIONS
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh adds more than $500,000 to his campaign war chest during his first four months in office.
Scott Brown , who has steered his famous pick-up truck north to New Hampshire to help burnish his regular-guy image in the New Hampshire Senate race, takes a time-out today to speak at a conference of hedge fund honchos in Las Vegas.
Charlie Baker ‘s campaign releases a new campaign video of the candidate and his brother recalling how Baker’s younger brother sought and received his support 33 years ago when he confided he was gay.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A survey of nonprofits with public sector contracts finds most have problems with government deals ranging from time-consuming paperwork to changes in the middle of the contract to late payments requiring them to tap credit lines or obtain bridge loans.
The alleged masterminds of the billion-dollar TelexFree pyramid scheme were shifting money among accounts at a furious pace as investigators closed in on them last month.
LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling is refusing to pay his NBA fine and threatening to sue the league, sources tell Sports Illustrated.
HEALTH CARE
Lynn officials are alarmed that there have been seven fatal heroin overdoses since the beginning of the year, the Item reports.
TRANSPORTATION
More than 130 municipal police departments and the State Police will ramp up enforcement of the state’s seat belt law by adding additional patrols to check for violations beginning Monday through a grant from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Paul Levy weighs in on the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s proposal to restrict open water swimming at Walden Pond, a regulation he says will likely be the subject of civil disobedience in the grand tradition of Thoreau.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Intervention by the Probation commissioner’s office in 2008 helped Patrick Lawton move to the next step in the interview process, but two officials involved in that process give differing explanations of how that happened, CommonWealth reports. The Herald’s Howie Carr spends a day in court.
Even as former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was indicted for the double murder of two men in the South End in 2012, his lawyers yesterday were in Bristol Superior Court seeking to dismiss the murder charge he has been held on for the last year.
Newly released texts reveal the flurry of exchanges between Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and a close friend now accused of obstructing justice around the time the Tsarnaev was identified as a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.
A “quality of life” crime sweep in Lawrence leads to the arrest of 43 people, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Boston Marathon bombing hero Carlos Arredondo settles an excessive force lawsuit he brought against four Boston police officers, the Associated Press reports.
MEDIA
Globe legend Walter Robinson, who “retired” seven years ago to teach at Northeastern University and oversee the New England First Amendment Center at the school, is returning to the paper as a part-time editor-at-large to beef up the Globe‘s investigative and enterprise efforts.
A leaked copy of the New York Times innovation report shows how far publications, even those like the Times, need to go in the shift to digital, the Nieman Journalism Lab reports.
After a New Yorker report that had Times staffers describing fired editor Jill Abramson as “pushy,” the Atlantic notes that studies show female corporate leaders are “disproportionately disliked for behaving forcefully.”
The Atlantic reports on the decline of the homepage, noting the NYT homepage lost 80 million visitors in the last two years.
A sort of, kind of, but not really, voicing of regret from one of the reporters who may have helped turn Elizabeth Warren into the most press-averse member of the US Senate.
