April 5–14, 1979 (Faculty, 1 week and 2 days) April 5–23, 1979 (Clerical workers and librarians, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Caused by
Disagreements over terms of a new labor contract
Methods
Picketing
Strike action
Resulted in
32.5 percent pay increase for faculty
Union recognition for clerical workers and librarians
Parties
Boston University - American Association of University Professors
Boston University Staff Organizing Committee (Distributive Workers of America District 65)
Service Employees International Union Local 925
Boston University
The 1979 Boston University strike was a labor strike involving employees at Boston University, a private university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The strike, involving faculty members, clerical workers, and librarians, began on April 5 and was fully ended by April 23.
The strike has its background in the presidency of John Silber, who became president of the university in 1971. Over the next few years, Silber made many changes that proved unpopular with the university's faculty, and in 1975, the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors (BU-AAUP) voted to act as a collective bargaining unit. Silber initially challenged the legality of the union, but by 1978, a court ruling mandated that the university had to commence negotiations with the union. Over the next few months, neither side came to a solid agreement, with pay increases being a particular point of contention.
In early 1979, the union began preparing for strike action, and on April 5, following a disagreement over a tentative agreement that had previously been reached, the union went on strike. That same day, clerical workers and librarians (unionized under the Distributive Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union, respectively) also voted to go on strike, partially in an act of solidarity with the AAUP and partially as a way to receive union recognition. The strike resulted in the cancellation of several hundred classes and particularly affected the College of Liberal Arts. On April 14, the faculty voted to end the strike after the university agreed to the previous tentative agreement, with the provision that they not perform any sort of sympathy strike with other unions. The clerical workers and librarians remained on strike for several more days despite this, and some professors tried to hold classes on locations away from the university as a show of solidarity with the strikers. They finally ended their strike on April 23 after the university agreed to recognize the two unions.
A year after the strike, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that faculty at private universities were not protected to unionize under the terms of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, and as a result, when the BU-AAUP's contract expired in 1982, the union became decertified. For this reason, historian Gary Zabel calls the strike a Pyrrhic victory for the faculty.
and 24 Related for: 1979 Boston University strike information
The 1979BostonUniversitystrike was a labor strike involving employees at BostonUniversity, a private university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States...
2024 BostonUniversitystrike is an ongoing labor strike in Boston, Massachusetts by graduate student and residential life workers at BostonUniversity. The...
The Boston police strike occurred on September 9, 1919, when Boston police officers went on strike seeking recognition for their trade union and improvements...
Organized labor portal United States portal List of strikes List of striking US workers by year Statistics, United States Bureau of Labor (1973-01-01)...
1948–92. University of Illinois Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780252026317. "Canada's national strike in 1991". CBC. "Congress Hotel Strike Ends, 10-Year Strike Was Longest...
Throughout the history of labor in the United States, many workers have gone on strike. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the predecessor organizations it cites...
BostonUniversity (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodists with its original...
work after the settlement of the 1979BostonUniversitystrike. Clerical and support staff had also gone out on strike at the time of the AAUP, and Piven...
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 15,000 total...
Following a March 1973 prison officer strike, the inmates of Walpole state prison, a high-security facility outside Boston, ran the prison under watch of citizen...
The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the...
The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression...
The 2023 United Auto Workers strike was a labor strike involving automobile workers in the labor union United Auto Workers (UAW) and the three unionized...
ISBN 9781493004539. Ryan, Dennis P. (1979). Beyond the ballot box: a social history of the Boston Irish, 1845-1917. ScholarWorks, University of Massachusetts-Amherst...
The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through...
Northeastern University Press. Chapter 9. Brooks, Van Wyck (1955). The Flowering of New England. New York: Dutton. Baltzell, E. Digby (1979). Puritan Boston and...
A bird strike (sometimes called birdstrike, bird ingestion (for an engine), bird hit, or bird aircraft strike hazard (BASH)) is a collision between an...
– Boston Police Strike, September 9–11, Boston, Massachusetts 1919 – Steel Strike of 1919, September 22 – January 8 Pennsylvania 1919 – Coal Strike of...
crediting threats of strikes and internal pressure to bolster such agreements. In early 2023, IG Metall threatened to go on strike if Tesla did not start...
Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, Massachusetts...
drama film loosely based on Tor Obrestad'd novel Sauda! Strike!, which is about the Sauda strike in 1970 The UFO Incident (1975) – biographical drama television...
vomeronasal organ.[citation needed] If disturbed, a garter snake may coil and strike, but it typically hides its head and flails its tail. These snakes will...
The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of...
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Roughly half of all Canadian tornadoes strike the Canadian Prairies and Northern Ontario as far east as Lake Superior...
Global Information