(March 21, 2017) Proposed cuts to the U.S. Department of Education budget would hit Louisiana hard, costing teachers and students over $73 million, according to the Center for American Progress.

UPDATE: The AAFMCC Constitution Amendment passed unanimously at yesterday's General Membership Meeting. Thank you for all members who attended and exercised their right to vote. 

ATTENTION AAFMCC MEMBERS:

The Spring 2017 General Membership Meeting will be on Friday, March 31st from 10 am- noon at Center Campus in N-106.

In order to continue preparing for our contract ratification, Wednesday, March 20's Executive Board Meeting with be a Closed Executive Session.  Only members of the Executive Board will be premitted to attend.

We will be scheduling Building Rep and Open Membership Meetings to present the contract settlement once we have a signed agreement.

Here is the March SABEA newsletter.  There are many things going on.  On March 15 & 16 General Membership meetings were held to update negotiations.

This week, BOCES will be presenting their budget plans on the 21 at SAEC and 22 at Myers-- always interesting.

On April 12 at the Board of Education meeting at Gick Road the 2016 Retirees will be recognized.

March 17, 2017

Jes King taught five class sections — discussions and labs — on a recent Thursday for his job as a faculty assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

King recently completed his master's degree, and is working as a faculty assistant in the chemistry department, part of a small group of instructional staff who now are paid less than their graduate student counterparts.

He and other faculty assistants interviewed for this article spoke with enthusiasm about their work.

Nevertheless, they have begun a campaign to persuade UW-Madison to bring their pay up to that of graduate student teaching assistants. The campaign was launched with the assistance of United Faculty and Academic Staff, UFAS, a labor union affiliated with AFT, American Federation of Teachers. Some of the faculty assistants are members of UFAS.

Read more at:

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/uw-madison-faculty-assistants-push-to-be-paid-as-much/article_31870bf8-930d-582b-87f1-62c1309033e1.html

GET-UP invites all members of the University of Pennsylvania community, including graduate workers, undergrads, staff, and faculty, as well as supporters of union democracy throughout the City of Philadelphia and beyond, to join us in this petition asking that the university remain neutral as we move to certify our union in an election. 

Text of the petition:

On Saturday, March 25, 2017 join us for a day of workshops focused on helping women take charge of their finances and plan for their futures.

Workshops:

• Basic financial literacy
• Managing debt and credit
• Retirement planning
• Navigating the world of business ownership

Colleagues,

The 2018 budget proposal released by the White House on March 16 "takes a meat cleaver to public education" and ignores promised investments in the types of skills, training and other vital family supports that Trump rode to the White House in 2016, AFT President Randi Weingarten says.