Over the past week or so this blog has started to discuss the issue of the collective bargaining for a faculty and academic staff union. The original article that inspired the post features comments from the AFT-Wisconsin union president Bryan Kennedy. In an email correspondence, I asked him how the issue affected students and this was his reply:
For the past decade, the University of Wisconsin has been slipping in its national ranking. This is due in part to the system’s inability to attract and retain top-notch faculty and academic staff. The UW system has dropped to the fifth quintile nationally in terms of faculty and academic staff salaries. In order for our children to continue getting the kind of stellar educational experience that the UW system has been known for, the university is going to have to examine how it funds and how much it funds those who teach.
A integral part of improving the working conditions on campus and in boosting compensation packages lies with faculty and academic staff being able to advocate for our own needs through collective bargaining. Without the right to form a union and to work with the strength of a union to meet our needs, we as faculty and academic staff will never be able to adequately address issues of morale, low pay, and lack of professional advancement. We currently have no seat at the table in these discussions. Students should be concerned when they see their best professors and top-notch researchers leaving the UW for other states where public education is more highly valued as evidenced by those states compensating their faculty and academic staff sufficiently. Any candidate for UW Chancellor should embrace the concept of faculty and academic staff unionization because it will empower those who will work most closely with the chancellor.
While I think our faculty ought to have the right to unionize and collectively bargain, I am still skeptical that collective bargaining would be successful in raising faculty salaries and the research cited at the bottom of my original post backs me up. I think the administrators of the university fully understand that we need to pay our professors more, the UW is a private company that profits by keeping the wages of its workers low. The problem lies not in the lack of desire to increase salaries but in the lack of available funding. I can’t see how collective bargaining would convince the state to increase funding or entice private donors to give more money to up professor salaries.
However, I think there are benefits to unionizing. One would be in the potential to improve faculty input in the governing of the university over the current Faculty Senate. As for whether there needs to a better structure for input from faculty, I have no idea. Kennedy’s comments above make it seem like that is the situation, but yet I never heard it expressed as a concern from anyone during the chancellor search. Another potential benefit to a union would in more organized and effective lobbying efforts in the state legislature. That, however, is something that definitely needs improvement on all fronts, not just from the faculty.
That same research I cited before on unions in higher education provides further evidence that the benefits of unions are in areas other than increasing wages:
The current focus of unions in higher education is to do interest-based bargaining.59 The idea behind this concept is to go beyond the industrial mindset of negotiating only for salary and benefits to that of bargaining for appropriate resource allocation to achieve educational goals that help the faculty and students.60
A faculty union with collective bargaining rights might be good for the UW, especially if professors want them as this letter suggests, just don’t expect it be the answer to our sub-par faculty salaries.
