I’ve shared some of my thoughts on recent comments by Rebecca Blank and Timothy Mulcahy on UW faculty labor organization. I really didn’t think too much of the issue at the time, but I recently came across this letter that had been posted on another blog.
Subject: New Chancellor must respect democratic workplace rights
From: “Chad Alan Goldberg”
Date: Mon, May 19, 2008 3:33 am
To: chancellorsearch@bascom.wisc.eduDear Chancellor Search Committee members,
As a tenured faculty member at UW-Madison and a union member (UFAS, AFT Local 223), I am writing to express my dismay and outrage at remarks made by two finalists for the position of UW-Madison Chancellor.
It has come to my attention that Rebecca Blank reportedly said that unions foster “adversarial” relations and work best for workers who are “lower on the totem pole” than faculty, and that Tim Mulcahy reportedly vowed that he would oppose “faculty and academic staff organizing at all costs.”
These autocratic attitudes are unacceptable. Indeed, it is precisely attitudes like these that push faculty and academic staff to join unions in the first place. To oppose the right of faculty and academic staff to organize — a right that is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the laws and traditions of the great state of Wisconsin — is a situation abhorrent to democracy. I fear that if Rebecca Blank or Tim Mulcahy were to become Chancellor, it would foster disruptive conflict rather than cooperation at our university, cause irreparable harm to the reputation of UW-Madison, and make it difficult for the university to recruit and retain the best faculty and staff. In short, it is not unions that pose a threat to UW-Madison, but the aggressive union-busting advocated by these two candidates. I urge you to do the right thing now rather than foster antagonism and undermine the morale of the educators and staff on whom you depend: Tell Blank and Mulcahy that their adversarial and reactionary attitudes toward unions make them unfit for the position of UW-Madison Chancellor.
Sincerely,
Chad Alan Goldberg
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
George L. Mosse Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, Israel (spring 2008 )
8116B William H. Sewell Social Science Building
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Home page: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~cgoldber/
The letter certainly makes it seem like a decisive issue for some of our faculty members. I think that Professor Goldberg’s characterization of the comments by Blank is not quite the correct representation of them based upon my reading of the original story. The comments by AFT-Wisconsin union president Bryan Kennedy seem to better represent her view of academic staff labor organization.
“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.
As far as whether or not this issue ought to be a large one for the university in general and more specifically in the chancellor search, I think is a relatively minor one. I think issues such as private fund raising, support from the state legislature and faculty salaries dwarf it in comparison. Judging from the fact that Mulcahy made his original comments at the luncheon the Wednesday before finals and I had not heard about it until last Friday in a single news story, it isn’t the most pressing concern for very many other people either.
