By Matthew Clyburn
On Labor Day, most professors and students stayed home to celebrate a three day weekend with family and friends. For Jason Jones, president of the CSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the day was a time to reflect on the origin of the holiday.
“The official holiday was created after Grover Cleveland put down the…Pullman Strike, it was essentially a face-saving gesture,” Jones said in an interview Monday.
“Labor Day is also an opportunity for people to reflect on the many ways that working conditions have improved since then. There’s no question that labor has won significant advances, but it has been a long time since there’s been a great deal popular support for some of the initiatives we’d like to see.”
Jones, who is also Vice President of the national AAUP Collective Bargaining Conference, believes Labor Day provides an opportunity for conversations about the impact of labor unions on modern life.
Jones sees the ongoing financial crisis as evidence that political leaders in Washington have little concern for average families. He believes that another benefit of the AAUP is having an organization that can provide political pressure needed to change these circumstances.
“Historically, labor unions have been one of the main ways in which of the voice of regular people could be heard in Congress,” Jones said. “Where labor unions have been strong, inequality in the country has been lessened by a very large amount.”
Jones contends that if private sector unions still existed the way they did in the 1960s, income inequality would be up to a third less than it is today. From his perspective, income inequality can be directly connected to recessions and depressions.
In other words, he said, “labor matters.”
Leaders of the CSU-AAUP will hold meetings with representatives of all CSU campuses in the coming months to ensure a smooth transition to the new higher education model in the state.
“We have the new Board of Regents and an interim president of the board,” Jones said. “One of the things we want to do is make sure that we build a new working relationship with those people so they know what CCSU is like, and particularly the value of a CCSU education. We want them to understand the variety of offerings that we have at Central and why preserving access to a traditional college experience is so important for our students.”
Jones said the CSU-AAUP also has an interest in developing their members for long-term success and fostering a new way of engage students. The union helps create new opportunities for communicating with students that may not have existed in the past, such as text messaging, social networking and online learning platforms.
“Faculty and students share a real interest,” Jones said. “They both want plentiful classes, especially classes that will help students graduate on time, they want classes by professors on campus and experts in their field.”
Jones believes that students and faculty have a common interest around money, too. The AAUP is expected to analyze the CSU system’s finances soon, following the passage of significant higher education reforms in the state legislature last year.
“I think people will be pretty surprised,” Jones said. “Students are paying more and more, but that money does not appear to be going to the faculty [that] teach their classes.”
“In this way, the work of the CSU-AAUP union and the interests of the students fit right together.”
