January Update: Portland State University-AAUP
by José Padín, President, PSU-AAUP
New year greetings to all my PSU colleagues and colleagues across Oregon.
Our union, I am pleased to share, has been preparing to tackle in 2018 the great challenges faced by higher education in these troubling times.
The single, largest challenge we face this year is the Trump Supreme Court. In the most perverse, un-democratic, and un-American fashion, the conservative-majority in the Supreme Court will decide whether to decimate unions. It will rule on obligating unions to fully serve, and work for the benefit of, colleagues that do not pay a cent towards what they receive. Representation without taxation. Freeloading. Un-collegial, or anti-social behavior. Call it what you will, this is a boldface effort to poison and corrupt our collective sense of morality. The Orwellian rhetoric that shrouds this attack is revolting: “right to work” (read: right to work without labor rights).
The best antidote against politics aiming to corrupt our values is to redouble efforts focused on activating, elevating, and giving new life to our values. And that we will do at PSU.
2018 is the year when we at PSU-AAUP will stand, locked in arms with our colleagues in AAUP-Oregon, and across the country, to say aloud: none of us will free-ride on our colleagues, and we are proud of that!
