In an email to its members, the American Associate of University Professors wrote:
“While the exact wording varies from state to state, the intent of the bills is the same; they all seek to deny public employees, including many faculty, the right to have a say in their working conditions and to bargain over wages and benefits. This attack on workers’ rights is led by shadowy, well-funded groups that have emerged in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, which removed the limits on the amount of money corporations can spend on attack ads and other “electioneering communications.” Groups like Americans for Prosperity and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads have poured millions of dollars into campaigns to roll back the advances that working people have made in the past half century. According to a new report released by Public Citizen, spending by outside groups jumped to $294.2 million in the 2010 election cycle, almost four times the amount spent in 2006, and nearly half came from just ten groups. In 60 out of 75 congressional races the candidate benefiting most from outside spending won the race–an almost unheard of 80 percent win rate. Additionally, the source of the money that flowed into the 2010 election is still largely unknown.”
Here is what AAUP leaves out:
Since 1989, labor unions have spent $500 billion on elections in America–two times more than oil, telecom, insurance, pharma, and realtors combined.
In Ohio’s 13 public colleges and universities, there are 5,135 professors and administrators making $100,00 or more.
The other unions tend to define “working people” as blue collar folks making south of $60,000, not highly-educated professors living in ivory towers.
Adjunct professors aside (they get paid very little), many professors in higher ed spend the vast majority of their 40-hour week NOT teaching students, but writing dust-collecting articles about the impact of the French revolution on basket-weaving in post-colonial Haiti.
God forbid the most educated group of Americans live under the same rules and conditions as the rest of us. If they did, perhaps we get less naval-gazing and more teaching.
Thank you..really informative!!
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As a professor who makes much less that $100,000, I can assure you that almost no one is writing about the research you describe. And the profs who make over $100K a year? Most are in business or the hard sciences, and could make MUCH MUCH more working for corporations. Most of them bring in millions of dollars in research monies to their universities and communities. Would you prefer that we pay them even less, and push them out of public education all together? What’s the alternative?
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