Labor Relations Commons^™

Working In Coalition, And Wall-To-Wall: The New Progressive Normal, Gary Rhoades

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

As the U.S. starts to come out of the pandemic, public declamations about and private deliberations within colleges and universities are framed in part by negotiating getting back to some form of “normal.” At the center of and delimiting these labor/management negotiations is an all-too-familiar master narrative articulated by management invoking a “new normal,” a time of conditions and challenges borne of, transmitted by, and/or accelerated and amplified due to Covid-19. Yet, I suggest that yet another iteration of disaster/disastrous academic capitalism is neither called for nor does it offer a compelling future for higher education. In addition, there is …