Our Next Higher Ed Campaign meeting will be October 7 at College Street United Church at 7pm. We'll be joined by Todd Vachon on the topic of Bargaining for the Common Good/A Just Transition for Education. We'll also review the state of organizing in our sector and identify key goals for the campaign in the coming year!
Bargaining for the common good was popularized through teachers organizing in Chicago and West Virginia, fighting the sustained bipartisan attacks on public education, and linking gains at the bargaining table–like smaller class sizes–to the direct benefit of
students and the community. It has been used to secure important climate wins, such as investments in solar infrastructure and energy efficiency upgrades, together with improvements in higher education. Campuses are major sites of greenhouse gas emission but also workplaces with huge potential to decarbonize, and our next meeting will consider how our unions could make gains in these areas.
Bargaining for the common good also serves as a means to make links with the disparate movements that intersect with campus labour issues which leaves questions of strategy for our Higher Ed sector wide campaign that we have to grapple with.
Todd E. Vachon is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and Director of the Labor Education Action Research Network at Rutgers University. He is the author of Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice.
This event will be a meeting for the Socialist Project's Higher Education Worker Organizing Campaign. The event is being supported by our friends at the
Global Labour Research Centre (GLRC) and
Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism, as a part of their collaborative workshop series, Up in Flames.
