In Historic Move, Harvard Teaching and Research Assistants Vote to Unionize

Why don&#x27;t the non-tenured (and non-tenure track) faculty unionize? They seem like more obvious candidates: Terrible pay, no job security, and a smart, highly educated group of people. They have nothing to lose but their crappy jobs. I&#x27;m sure they can see it as well as I can; can someone here shed light on it?<p>I would guess that they didn&#x27;t historically unionize because they were a much smaller group - a higher proportion of faculty had tenure and thus job security. Also, I wonder if they were better paid before universities in the U.S. became focused on money as their primary mission (income; expenses; patents; spin-offs; research grants; tuition; and of course the whole purpose of education became future salary, not trivial things like knowledge, understanding, thought, and the welfare of civilization).

Professor Roberto Unger (Harvard) often talks about the current restlessness of the masses in his political philosophy of the paradigm of Progressive Politics courses. Something that through listening to his lecturers over the last few years I strongly agree with. Mainly that people at this moment in time are yearning for a reimagining of what the human experience is, and the solution is a progressive political campaign reimagining our entire institutions.<p>We see the same restlessness in the national Primary Education teacher strikes. Is it possible that the academics are the beginning of a more substantial wave of worker rights and protections as we enter the new Knowledge Economy?<p>Edited to add website: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robertounger.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robertounger.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>

So where the hell does the $46k&#x2F;year tuition go?

It&#x27;s good to see prestigious universities leading for a change, instead of being one of the most socially conservative institutions in so many ways.

I can&#x27;t imagine this not impacting the impartiality of staff when teaching subjects related to labor unions, like Economics.

After the Civil War, all of those who were in favor of ending slavery became the most vicious opponents of labor and unions and worker rights.<p>Their reasoning was that this was a form of governmental control over working and the freedom of workers, just like slavery was.<p>Every time they defeated a minimum wage law, or broke a union, they congratulated themselves for standing up for “freedom”.<p>Anyway, this is one of the reasons that the Republican party drifted into conservatism slowly after the Civil War.<p>We are seeing something similar now, with Democrats so focused on the rights of smaller and smaller groups, it’s starting to look like “extreme individual rights” all over again. Will they drift towards conservatism while Republicans do the opposite, cross-pollinating some positions between them on the way?