Faculty Assembly

October 12, 2001 Faculty Representative Assembly Meeting

CU FACULTY COULD CONSIDER
UNIONIZING, AAUP LEADER SAYS

By Marianne Goodland

Should CU faculty look at forming a union to resolve concerns about faculty salaries and merit increases? Faculty considered that question at a forum on collective bargaining last Thursday at the CU-Denver campus.

“What used to be faculty prerogatives are no longer,” Michael Mauer, associate secretary and director of organizing and services for the American Association of University Professors, said, referring to faculty’s ability to participate in university decision-making. Mauer spoke on Oct. 4 at a forum sponsored by the Academic Personnel Committee of University Faculty Council and held after the Faculty Senate meeting. (See story above.)

Mauer told the 17 faculty in attendance that one-third of faculty nationwide are represented by unions. There are 70 unionized AAUP faculty groups at colleges and universities across the country, he said, and for all unions, 240,000 faculty at public colleges and universities are unionized as well as about 10,000 faculty employed in private institutions.

State statutes govern the right to unionize in the public sector, Mauer said. Thirty states have enabling legislation that grants the right to unionize to some or all public employees. Colorado is not one of them, he added. However, state statutes provide a roadmap on how to organize; for example, the director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment has the authority to intervene in labor disputes. If public-sector employees are considering unionizing, the department has the right to conduct a secret ballot election at the request of the parties involved. In addition, statutes prohibit parties from making unilateral changes to the employment relationship once collective bargaining is in place.

Union groups are concerned about the increasing use of part-time, non-tenure-track faculty or graduate students to teach courses. “It’s exploitation,” Mauer said. “We’re not talking about their competence or ability to teach. S When you have an adjunct teaching at three different institutions, their office is in their cars and office hours are held in their cars. The system doesn’t provide them the tools they need to be fully effective at their jobs.”

There’s a general feeling that the faculty voice isn’t being respected, he added. “Faculty are not being given information they need to participate in decision making and not being accorded respect in the decision-making process,” he said.

If CU faculty are interested in forming a union, they need to establish majority support, Mauer said, adding that unions are not the only effective mechanism for strengthening faculty voices. CU faculty need to organize first, he said, and AAUP can assist them in building strong AAUP chapters at all four campuses, with assistance from faculty at other institutions.

Michael Preston of UCB English said, “1 am in favor of organizing rather than unionizing. He added that most faculty would object to the salary increase process. “It’s like people waiting to win the lottery,” he said. “Some people do [win], but you don't know the reason why."  If the university had a more orderly process, Preston said, with salary-setting and merit-increase information made available to faculty, "this would be a more healthy place."

Joh Ruhnka of UCD business said part of the reason for faculty to investigate to investigate collective bargaining is because faculty get the "short end of the stick" in shared governance.  He said classified-staff salary increases are consistently higher than faculty raises, and "we end up at the bottom of the budget food chain."

Mauer replied that one of the benefits of unionization is that salaries are often higher for union members.  "Even without a union contract, having a strong organization gives you a [stronger] leg up than individual voices [speaking] in a non-organized way, " he said.

Once a union is in place, Mauer said, sometimes the work place runs more smoothly because the union provides a mechanism for dealing with faculty problems.  "A fair amount of productivity is eroded because people are unhappy about salaries and the way they are distributed, " he said.   "If a union system is in place the institution would be better off," because it would result in a better relationship between faculty and administrators.

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Susan Barney Jones
Editor, Silver & Gold Record