This is just a reminder to union members to deduct union dues from your taxable income when preparing your taxes. –Suzanne Verderber

The Theater Development Fund offers up to a 70% discount on theater tickets if you are a full-time teacher OR (significantly for our part-time faculty) a Union member. –Suzanne Verderber

This organization represents many U.S. labor unions who are joining in solidarity with Iraqi workers to fight for the right of Iraqis to keep oil profits within their own country, for the use of their people, not international corporations. Many teacher's unions are members. Should the Pratt faculty union consider joining? Can we reach a consensus on this? –Suzanne Verderber

An editorial in the New York Times points out that the company used to estimate the cost of medical visits, estimates that are in turn used to determine the reimbursement of out-of-network benefits, is OWNED by one of the largest insurers in the US. So, both the "estimators" and the insurers obviously have a vested interest in low-balling estimates, keeping profits high, and fudging the numbers, if necessary. It's the same old corporate love story. Does it really surpris

EVERYONE is invited to add his or her comments to any of these posts, whether or not you are a member of the Pratt Faculty Union. All that you need to do is click on the log-in button below and follow the instructions. The site should be driven by dialogue, not, as Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin would say, authoritarian monologism! –Suzanne Verderber

The New York Times has reported that New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating several insurance companies, including AETNA, for underestimating the "reasonable" rate of medical charges when a patient uses an out-of-network provider. Typically, in such cases (including my out-of-network plan) insurers pay 80% of what they determine to be the prevailing rate for a given service. It is precisely this that Cuomo is charging is underestimated, requiring consumer

Who makes decisions on how to perform medical procedures, doctors or HMO's? This piece about AETNA demonstrates that doctors have to fight the HMO's to have the power to make the right decisions for their patients. Will this kind of situation ever be resolved unless this country takes the profit out of healthcare? –Suzanne Verderber

Is "collegiality" a valid category in assessing whether a faculty member merits promotion? This statement from the American Association of University Professors explains in the plainest terms the dangers of separating collegiality out from those criteria traditionally taken into account at most institutions of higher learning: teaching, research, and service. The statement argues that by necessity, collegiality is a component of all of these areas, indeed, for one's overal

Max Fraser's piece in the Nation describes the damage done to labor rights by the extremely partisan, Bush-appointed (a redundant formulation, I know) National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It interestingly notes that much of the weakness of the current labor movement and decline in union membership harks back to the 1947 Taft-Hartley act, which restricted workers' right to strike. He explains that before the act, workers rallied effectively for rights by relying upon the

In this article, Krugman ties good wages and survival of the middle class to the labor movement, and questions Obama's critique of Edwards.