Just an fyi. They will be at three California campuses. One person at each. Do not talk to them (faculty), as good of an idea as it might be management will boot you so fast.
Rumor locally is a Cali president is inviting them to do just that (under order from Fraud Clown), to give just cause to fire full time faculty.
Be careful!
Blow him a kiss.
Unions fella will be at Ai Hollywood graduation today.
Snowden knows what he/she is talking about.
*mill
Maybe so but some faculty are stuck for personal reasons and I think we should help them any way we can. If you are leaving you have nothing to lose. Why not at least help your colleagues?
If that's the case please share info with the rest of the full timers
They were there, several of us got cards, they came during portfolio show. They are only targeting full time faculty.
FYI- there were no union peeps at AI Hollywood today. If there were, not one faculty member was approached by them. Bring it on! Nothing left to lose here.
Go back to work.
Being a former director having fought management for many years, yes they can fire you for talking to a union. They won't call it that, but you'd be put on their hit list and it'd be called a "planned restructuring". What you don't know is that corporate picks the people they believe have been rebellious and adds a few extra people from different ethnic, gender, and age groups so it doesn't look like they're picking on a particular group, then lays them all off. It's standard corporate procedure.
Your best bet is to:
A. Unionize quickly without letting management know you're in support of it. They do have people spying on faculty thinking if they rat on their staff, it'll save their jobs. The VP of Deans visited our campus and grilled each director in a small room with our supervisors standing over us like a police interrogation, to find out who we believed were union sympathizers. I wouldn't roll over and I was threatened with my job.
Faculty needs to grow some big ones and unionize. EDMC is very frightened of unions. If there are any sheep in your herd, you're all going to get sheared. That's what happened at our campus. Half our faculty chickened out and EDMC bought them off with "Pay Hikes" (out of the goodness of their hearts) which was actually bribe money, and 6 months later, they gutted our campus.
B. If you get laid off, threaten to lawyer up and have a labor attorney's biz card handy to drop on HR's desk. The goal is you can negotiate a larger separation package, and trust me, EDMC's separation is pretty poor compared to competitors. Let them know you're willing to separate, but ask for 50% more than they're offering. As long as they know you're willing to deal and you're calm and patient, you can get more out of them. One of my peers negotiated that they pay for the remainder of is doctoral degree for the coming year. Just don't panic as they will play on your emotions. They're more scared of you then you are of them. What you're signing is an agreement that you'll leave without suing them for a set amount of money. What they'll offer is roughly around a months salary. What competitors offer is roughly 6 months pay.
Be Prepared.
Do what I did and start hoarding cash now. Sell things if you need to. Everyone needs to have FU money set aside which should be a years worth of living expenses. Unemployment will last 6 weeks if EDMC does not contest it, but unemployment benefits is about 40% of your salary. Not enough to live off of.
Last bit of bad news.
Ageism is alive and well in America. If you're over 55, you're not going to have a good chance at finding something. Despite what's reported in the news, the job market is poor. If you try to get back into your primary industry, you'll find you'll be competing against your students, and although they only know a quarter of what you know, the perception by employers is they work cheap and are more in touch creatively because they're younger. If you try to stay in education, no one will touch you if you're from a "for profit". You'll be treated like a diseased h--ker. No matter how good you look to them, they won't touch you. If you are laid off, NETWORK. Finding jobs online is about a 5% return at best. Networking is about a 60% return so start making those calls now. Taking the emotion out of all these posts, people are right. Ai is going under. It's an unsustainable business model and they know it. Their goal is to scuttle the ship incurring the least cost to the company, while the captains make off in the life boats with their golden parachutes. To them, you're just the rats swimming for flotsam.
So what is the trumped up reason they would be giving for termination? Peeps cannot be terminated for talking to union reps....