Unionization in the Academy is an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of academic unions--their history, purpose, and the conflicts they cause. Judith Wagner DeCew takes on the central issues, including unions for part-time and adjunct faculty, graduate student unions, and collective bargaining. The book also includes a history of the rise of academic unions and its watershed moments, such as the U.S. Supreme Court's 1980 Yeshiva decision. A series of important articles by other observers supplements DeCew's insights and arguments. This combination yields a detailed survey of the arguments for and against academic unions of all kinds. Are unions a threat because they create adversity and conflict with academic values? Or do unions support those values by creating community and collegiality? Unions in Academia is the essential reader for faculty, students, administrators, and anyone else trying to answer those questions.

Teacher Unions and Social Justice is an anthology of more than 60 articles documenting the history and the how-tos of social justice unionism. Together, they describe the growing movement to forge multiracial alliances with communities to defend and transform public education. Book Review 1: “The fight for justice – the fight for educational justice – is achieved by community wins. As more unions join forces with their communities to engage in social justice unionism the community will win, and we need a playbook. Teacher Unions and Social Justice… is that playbook. It’s packed with ideas, strategies, and the voices of change from across the nation from people who are protesting, marching, striking, organizing, creating, and demanding the schools our students deserve.” -- Bettina Love, Professor of Teacher Education, University of Georgia, Co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network Book Review 2: “..this book is centered in strategy. It recommends building coalitions between unions and communities to demand investment in public schools. In the book’s vision, a union’s identity goes beyond its leaders…to promote and publicize the members’ collective action on cultural and community matters of concern." -- Foreword Clarion Reviews Book Review 3: “Teachers Unions and Social Justice creates a clear roadmap for building and wielding the power working people need to restore our social contract, by using common-good bargaining to build solidarity that extends beyond our workplaces and into our communities.” -- Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

In The Future of Our Schools, Lois Weiner explains why teachers who care passionately about teaching and social justice need to unite the energy for teaching to efforts to self-govern and transform teacher unions. Drawing on research, her experience as a public school teacher, and as a union activist, she explains how to create the teachers unions public education desperately needs. Lois Weiner is a professor at New Jersey City University and has been a life-long teacher union activist who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She is the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistanc e .

This timely and comprehensive volume will spur and strengthen public debate over the role of teachers unions in education reform for years to come. Collective bargaining shapes the way public schools are organized, financed, staffed, and operated. Understanding collective bargaining in education and its impact on the day-to-day life of schools is critical to designing and implementing reforms that will successfully raise student achievement. But when it comes to public discussion of school reform, teachers unions are the proverbial elephant in the room. Despite the tremendous influence of teachers unions, there has not been a significant research-based book examining the role of collective bargaining in education in more than two decades. As a result, there is little basis for a constructive, empirically grounded dialogue about the role of teachers unions in education today.