Unionizing the UW faculty

I didn’t even realize it was an issue to consider until reading this article about the thoughts of two the finalists for chancellor on the subject.

AFT-Wisconsin union president Bryan Kennedy said during luncheon meetings, Mulcahy stated he would work to avoid faculty and academic staff labor organizing at all costs.

“To publicly say that he would hope conditions wouldn’t get so bad that we need a union, it certainly surprised me,” Kennedy told 27 News.

“It made it appear as if his biggest fear as chancellor would be that he would do such a bad job, we’d want to form a union.”

While faculty have a voice on campus policies through a shared governance structure, Kennedy is pushing for collective bargaining rights for campus labor units to address wage issues, and is lobbying lawmakers to change statutes to allow such campus activity.

Kennedy said another chancellor finalist candidate, former University of Michigan administrator Rebecca Blank, told a campus audience unions were more appropriate for workers “lower on the totem pole” than faculty and academic staff.

Kennedy provided 27 News with Blank’s e-mail response to the concern of union officials.

“Those lower on the totem pole – and I believe that I clearly implied that I meant workers who had fewer channels into management decision-making at UW – often found unions useful,” Blank wrote.

“She was very respectful,” Kennedy said. But Kennedy said his union maintains differences with Blank over the wisdom of campus faculty and academic staff unionization with collective bargaining rights.

Chancellor Search Committee chair David Walsh told 27 News all four chancellor finalist candidates are open to considering the possibility of collective bargaining on campus, although Walsh could not speak for Mulcahy’s campus remarks.

Kennedy said unlike Blank, Mulcahy has not responded to the union concerns.

It’s not too surprising that the president of AFT-Wisconsin would support unionizing our faculty and academic staff, they are the union that represents faculty from a number of other UW System schools. In my mind, a faculty union for the purposes of collective bargaining would just be added bureaucracy that would be completely unnecessary and just incur an added expense. When in most cases, the first question asked of prospective chancellors is “What are you going to do to raise faculty salaries?” and all of them make it clear that it is a pressing issue to them, its pretty clear that there isn’t really a need to convince the administration that they need higher salaries. Besides, does anyone really think that the way to get on the good side of the Republicans in the state legislature who are so opposed to increasing UW funding is to unionize? It would probably just make them detest higher education even more. However, having an organization of faculty to become a powerful lobbying force in the state legislature for things like higher salaries, more money for research and domestic partner benefits is something I could definitely get behind.

[Edit] The research agrees with me on the usefulness of collective bargaining for increasing salaries in higher education.

The percentages of increases in salaries under collective bargaining agreements for higher education are comparable to that of industry at large.⁵⁸

…

Strikes are not an effective bargaining tool and faculty compensation packages on unionized campuses have had the same rate of growth as that of industry at large.

[Edit] Mulcahy regrets the above comments