Northwestern University and College Athletes Players Association

While many public universities have been bargaining with student-employee unions for decades, the National Labor Relations Board has struggled with the notion of allowing bargaining on behalf of student-employees at private institutions. In recent years, the Board has twice changed course on the question, granting bargaining rights to graduate assistants at New York University in 2000, and four years later reversing itself in a case involving Brown University. The Board is now poised to rule on another case – this one involving student athletes at Northwestern University – which may present an opportunity to once again revisit the broader student-employee question. This article lays out the legal principles underlying the ongoing debate about bargaining among student-employees at private universities, and the possible application of those principles in the Northwestern University case

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’s Perspective

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’s Perspective

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time

The Developing Law Governing Employee and Employer Rights Relating to Use of Electronic Media Within and Outside the Workplace

Employees are using electronic media at an increasing rate to communicate with others both in and out of the workplace. While email, social networking sites, blogs, text messages, and online videos may seem to present new and complex challenges for employees and employers, the decisional law suggests that the key to understanding issues presented by electronic media use is to reason by analogy to more “traditional” means of communication. For example, an email string between two people or among a group may be viewed similarly to an in-person conversation; the former is just memorialized in writing. A comment posted on an employee’s Facebook page may be treated like a verbal comment made by an employee to friends and coworkers. The same fundamental questions come up in the cases involving traditional or electronic communications: What was communicated? Who communicated it? When was it communicated? To whom was it communicated

Understanding the relation between Zika virus infection during pregnancy and adverse fetal, infant and child outcomes: a protocol for a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of pregnant women and their infants and children

IntroductionZika virus (ZIKV) infection during pregnancy is a known cause of microcephaly and other congenital and developmental anomalies. In the absence of a ZIKV vaccine or prophylactics, principal investigators (PIs) and international leaders in ZIKV research have formed the ZIKV Individual Participant Data (IPD) Consortium to identify, collect and synthesise IPD from longitudinal studies of pregnant women that measure ZIKV infection during pregnancy and fetal, infant or child outcomes.Methods and analysisWe will identify eligible studies through the ZIKV IPD Consortium membership and a systematic review and invite study PIs to participate in the IPD meta-analysis (IPD-MA). We will use the combined dataset to estimate the relative and absolute risk of congenital Zika syndrome (CZS), including microcephaly and late symptomatic congenital infections; identify and explore sources of heterogeneity in those estimates and develop and validate a risk prediction model to identify the pregnancies at the highest risk of CZS or adverse developmental outcomes. The variable accuracy of diagnostic assays and differences in exposure and outcome definitions means that included studies will have a higher level of systematic variability, a component of measurement error, than an IPD-MA of studies of an established pathogen. We will use expert testimony, existing internal and external diagnostic accuracy validation studies and laboratory external quality assessments to inform the distribution of measurement error in our models. We will apply both Bayesian and frequentist methods to directly account for these and other sources of uncertainty.Ethics and disseminationThe IPD-MA was deemed exempt from ethical review. We will convene a group of patient advocates to evaluate the ethical implications and utility of the risk stratification tool. Findings from these analyses will be shared via national and international conferences and through publication in open access, peer-reviewed journals.Trial registration numberPROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews (CRD42017068915).</jats:sec

Northwestern University and College Athletes Players Association

While many public universities have been bargaining with student-employee unions for decades, the National Labor Relations Board has struggled with the notion of allowing bargaining on behalf of student-employees at private institutions. In recent years, the Board has twice changed course on the question, granting bargaining rights to graduate assistants at New York University in 2000, and four years later reversing itself in a case involving Brown University. The Board is now poised to rule on another case – this one involving student athletes at Northwestern University – which may present an opportunity to once again revisit the broader student-employee question. This article lays out the legal principles underlying the ongoing debate about bargaining among student-employees at private universities, and the possible application of those principles in the Northwestern University case

The Developing Law Governing Employee and Employer Rights Relating to Use of Electronic Media Within and Outside the Workplace

Employees are using electronic media at an increasing rate to communicate with others both in and out of the workplace. While email, social networking sites, blogs, text messages, and online videos may seem to present new and complex challenges for employees and employers, the decisional law suggests that the key to understanding issues presented by electronic media use is to reason by analogy to more “traditional” means of communication. For example, an email string between two people or among a group may be viewed similarly to an in-person conversation; the former is just memorialized in writing. A comment posted on an employee’s Facebook page may be treated like a verbal comment made by an employee to friends and coworkers. The same fundamental questions come up in the cases involving traditional or electronic communications: What was communicated? Who communicated it? When was it communicated? To whom was it communicated