Organizing Professionals: Academic Employees Negotiating a New Academy

Amidst unprecedented levels of union organizing in higher education, Gary Rhoades combines the perspectives of a scholar and labor movement activist and leader to provide a comprehensive analysis of organizing campaigns and collective bargaining agreements for faculty (contingent and tenure-track), graduate students, and postdoc employees. Academic employees are organizing and negotiating for respect for workers, their work, and the public value of higher education. Rhoades analyzes how academic employees are shifting the imbalance of power between labor and management, reducing the internal professional stratification between segments of the academic workforce, and intersecting workplace issues with broader issues of equality, public value, and social justice, and in the process organizing and negotiating for a new, more progressive academy.