News

Madison, WI: With Wisconsin at the center of a national debate over tenure, academic freedom, and funding for public higher education, members of the AFT-Wisconsin Higher Education Council announced a series of events to be held across the UW System in November examining the theme of “The Wisconsin Idea in Crisis.” “The Wisconsin Idea is a simple one,” said Richard Leson, a UW-Milwaukee associate professor of art history and the president of AFT local 3535, The Association of UW Professionals. “It’s the idea that the University of Wisconsin System should improve the lives of all Wisconsinites—through high quality education, research for the public good, and constant community outreach. As members of the AFT-Wisconsin Higher Education Council, my colleagues and I—academic and university staff, faculty, and graduate employees—are deeply troubled by efforts of radical politicians to weaken one of the preeminent public university systems in the world. That’s why we will be holding events on UW System campuses across the state—at Eau Claire, Stout, Madison, Green Bay, Stevens Point, and Milwaukee—to draw attention to the existential crisis that we in the UW System are confronting.”

Guest post by Nancy Shefferly, UW-Stevens Point Biology Instructor and member of the UW-Stevens Point Academic Representation Council, AFT local 6505

As an educator, I can only view the prospect of allowing firearms on a college campus as a catastrophically bad idea.

Be sure to check out the op-ed by retired Milwaukee Area Technical College instructor and former Local 212 Executive Vice-President Charlie Dee that lays out why the secretive plan to merge the Wisconsin Technical College System and the UW Colleges would be a disaster: "The first thing a responsible committee would do is research what happened when other states tried this. It would discover that mergers in Minnesota, Georgia, Alaska, Connecticut and New Jersey have failed to produced expected savings, but instead have created myriad problems."

AFT convention delegates on July 13 unanimously passed a special order of business—recommended by the executive council—to fight back against attacks on unions and teachers like Vergara v. California and Harris v. Quinn, and to fight forward to reclaim the promise of America.

We work in the public sector because we care. We care about our community. We care about our neighbors, our families, and - we care about each other. And speaking with one voice is always more powerful than speaking alone. We organize as a union because we can then gain the strength to make real change. Together, we speak with one voice that no one can shake  —  and we'll be louder than our bosses, our elected officials, and those anti-government folks.