Collective bargaining has historical roots in the United States that date back to the nineteenth century. In 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act that gave employees the right to unionize. For the first thirty years, unions under the Wagner Act were primarily blue-collar workers. Faculty in higher education began to unionize in the 1960's, particularly at community colleges. The reasons that faculties unionized include the need for better salaries and job security.
The Yeshiva Decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1980 limited the ability of faculty in the private sector to unionize. The court ruled that the roles of the faculty members constituted managerial activities. This decision applies only to private sector schools and not to public institutions.
There are many issues on unionized campuses. The use of part-time faculty causes conflicts with the union members. Adjunct faculty and graduate-teaching assistants have formed their own unions on some campuses. Administrators are trying to exclude tenure from collective bargaining agreements and faculty is now negotiating for improved working conditions with the increase in the use of technology.
In the 1990s collective bargaining for faculties in higher education still focuses on salaries, benefits, and job security. The current mindset of faculty negotiations has moved to include bargaining for appropriate resource allocation to achieve educational goals.
Contents & Outline
Historical RootsUnion Development in Higher Education
Faculty Union Issues in the 1980s and 1990s
Strikes: Use and frequencyConclusions
Thirty years and no positive effectEndnotes
Collective bargaining or unionism has its historical roots in the United States that date back to the trade unionism movement of the nineteenth century. There were many efforts to unionize labor and even strikes in the late nineteenth century but management generally controlled the salaries and working conditions of employees. Laws in the twentieth century enabled collective bargaining to enter the mainstream of the labor force, especially that of industrial laborers. In the second half of the twentieth century professionals or white-collar workers, including faculties in higher education began to unionize. The development of faculty unions in higher education occurred about thirty years after the large non-professional unions such as the United Auto Workers were well established. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief overview of unionism and to identify the current issues for faculty under collective bargaining agreements in higher education.
The basic components of all collective bargaining agreements are those of salaries and benefits. These central elements of a union contract are true for unions in higher education. Unions composed of professionals usually want to have their professional roles defined in a collective bargaining agreement in addition to the basic compensation package. This is true for faculties in higher education. The range of issues for faculty under a union contract include self-governance, the use of adjunct faculty members and graduate-teaching assistants, the introduction of long distance learning, and tenure.
In the 1960s and 1970s the major groups that represented unionized faculties were the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).1 All of these organizations originally were started as professional associations to foster the development of education for students and faculty. None of these associations is a national union but they have the ability at the local level to be the certified bargaining unit for a faculty union. The movement of these organizations towards that of being collective bargaining agents developed out of a necessity for faculty to have sound economic packages. Both the NEA and the AFT began unions for elementary and secondary education teachers as early as 1943 but only in the late 1960s started to work with the faculties at colleges and universities.2 The AAUP, which represents 64,298 faculty in 62 bargaining units,3 issued its first Statement on Collective Bargaining4 in 1973 and revised it in 1984. The AAUP supports collective bargaining to reinforce the best features of higher education and to give faculty an effective voice in decisions that affect its members' professional well being.
In 1935 the United States Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act better known as the Wagner Act.5 Senator Wagnerbelieved that the right to bargain collectively was social justice for the worker and sensible for business.6 The Wagner Act grants employees the rights to self-organization, to join labor organizations to bargain collectively through elected representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid protection.7 The Wagner Act led to the recognition of industrial unions during the 1930s and 1940s when workers were demanding better wages and working conditions. The impetus behind the Wagner Act was to reduce the power and control that management had over the labor force.
In order to give some power back to management that had been lost under the Wagner Act, in 1947 Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act.8.This law gave the federal government the ability to issue injunctions against union activity.9 It also forbids secondary boycotts and closed shop agreements.10 The closed shop prohibition allows an employer to hire a non-union employee. This prohibition is important to colleges since non-union faculty members may be hired when a faculty union is present. The non-union faculty members still must pay union dues if they receive any benefits that are derived from the collective bargaining agreement.11 There is an incentive for a new faculty member to join the union in order to have a vote at meetings given that union dues must be paid regardless of union membership status.
Union Development in Higher Education
Recognition of unions rose rapidly under the limits of the Wagner Act. The automotive workers, steel mill employees, and coal miners negotiated contracts that gave higher wages and improved working conditions. For the about the first thirty years of collective bargaining under the Wagner Act there was very little unionization by white-collar workers. In the 1960s, things began to change in higher education, especially in the public sector. The land grant colleges founded in the late 1800s were expanding into large universities to accommodate the increase in the number of college students as a result of the baby boom that had started twenty years earlier. The number of community colleges was also increasing. With the increase in community colleges the number of faculty employed by the public sector increased dramatically.
The rise in community colleges caused a rise in unions on these campuses so much so that collective bargaining in higher education during the 1970s was considered primarily a community college phenomenon.12
Even though the number of government owned community colleges was increasing, the first faculty to unionize in the public sector was in 1967 at the United States Merchant Marine Academy under the auspices of the AFT.13 However, the trend was for two year community college faculties to unionize, so that by 1984 they dominated the number of unionized faculties.14 At that time unions represented 160,000 professors at 547 institutions of higher education with twenty five percent of two-year community colleges being unionized as compared to only twelve percent of four-year colleges.
According to Kearney15 in the 1960s, low salaries and threats to tenure by a reduction in faculty were the prime reasons for unionization by faculty in higher education. Wages, benefits, and job security remained the most important causes of faculty unionization through the 1970's 16 and they continue to be important in the 1990s.17
The case of Youngstown State University (YSU) by Shipka 18 describes how and why a faculty unionizes. The faculty, which lived in a highly unionized community, had seen salaries and benefits for the blue-collar workers steadily rise during the late 1960s. There had not been comparable increases for the faculty at YSU. When the faculty first started to unionize the issue was job security. Over the next three years, it became evident that the reason the faculty was moving towards a faculty union was the lack of due process when faculty positions were reduced and the non-existence of faculty self-governance. The drive for a faculty union took place at the beginning of 1970. This was at the same time students demanded input into university governance and the publication of student written evaluations of faculty. The administration of the university used the student-generated documents to determine which faculty members to release. These events prompted the development of a union, a two-year court battle, a faculty strike, and eventually a signed contract. The faculty reported in 1975 that they never really wanted a union but only for the administration to listen to their demands.
The demographics of academic unions in 1994 was described by Annuziato.19 According to his data, unions represent professors on 1,075 campuses throughout the United States. The preponderance of unionized faculty was at 987 public colleges and universities. His data agree with the recent increase in collective bargaining agreements on public college campuses where there was a growth of 1.65 percent 20 . Faculty unions in the public sector traditionally have developed when the political climate of the region is not favorable to higher education and when the institution has other unions representing non-faculty employees.21
The Yeshiva Decision and Its Effects
The desire of faculty to participate in decisions at universities and the high number of unions in the public sector of higher education has a specific cause and effect. The Yeshiva Decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1980.22 limited the ability of faculty in the private sector to unionize. This decision was rooted in the Wagner Act which forbids the inclusion of supervisors in a union and partially defines a supervisor as an individual who may hire, promote, reward or recommend such an action.23 In the Yeshiva Decision the United States Supreme Court ruled that the faculty at Yeshiva University could not be unionized because their roles as faculty members constituted activities that are normally defined as managerial.24 The court defined the functions of university self-governance committees as managerial since they determine salaries, promotion, and tenure of faculty.25 By serving on committees the faculty role changed from that of an employee to that of a supervisor. The Court ruled that the faculty acted as management by controlling the finances of the university when they set the standards for admissions. The faculty at Yeshiva University in effect was able to limit the number of students who enrolled and therefore control the revenue of the school.(26) This was the first time that the United States Supreme Court applied the principles of collective bargaining to that of a private academic institution.27
It is important to note that the Yeshiva Decision excludes public sector institutions from its jurisdiction 28 and that collective bargaining in public institutions is regulated by state law and exempt from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings.29 There was an attempt to have the Yeshiva Decision apply to a public university in 1987. The faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987 became the first public institution to be denied collective bargaining rights under the Yeshiva Decision but this decision was reversed on appeal by the Pennsylvania Labor Board.30 The limit of the Yeshiva Decision continues to apply only to the private sector.
The long lasting effects of the Yeshiva Decision was that the NLRB decertified thirty bargaining units on university campuses and that by 1995 only seventy private sector colleges and universities had collective bargaining units.31 The primary negative outcome for faculty under collective bargaining agreements since Yeshiva is that faculty workload is no longer a NLRB mandated bargaining issue as it had been before the 1980 decision.32 The positive outcome of the Yeshiva decision is that universities have modeled their faculty self-governance committees after the Yeshiva model.33 The more self-governance and economic decision-making that is given to faculty the less likely that a collective bargaining unit can be certified by the NLRB. The determination of when a faculty performs self-governance in a way that is managerial is determined by practice and not by bylaws.34 At Duquesne University the practice at the school was that the dean never overruled the faculty, thus making the school subject to the Yeshiva Decision.35 This was the opposite situation at Bradford College where the president of the school stated in a letter to the faculty that they had no power over administrative activities.36 The courts allowed the faculty union at Bradford College to remain intact. Leaders in higher education who want to prevent the development of a certified faculty union need to grant faculty more administrative decision-making ability around economic issues.
Faculty Union Issues in the 1980's and the 1990's
Unions have traditionally used strikes or the threat of strikes as a source of control and a method to negotiate for a stronger contract. At schools of higher education there were thirty-seven strikes by faculty from 1984-1994.37 The greatest number of strikes took place in the mid-1980s.38 The reason for the low number of strikes is that management usually insists upon a no-strike clause in the union contract for the term of the contract.39 A no-strike clause does permit a union to strike after the contract has expired, thus the faculty can strike after the life of the contract. No evidence has been found that strikes by university or college faculties have led to improved salaries or working conditions in the collective bargaining agreements signed after a strike.
When a faculty is unionized problems can arise not related to the collective bargaining agreement. The primary change that occurs in any union situation is a difference in the cultural atmosphere of the organization.40 A research study published in 1997 41 on unionized faculty in higher education found that there was defensive behavior and impaired communication between the faculty and administration once a union contract was signed. The overall results of the study were that unions on campuses generated centralized control where before the collective bargaining agreement there had been informal decision making and that the union members found the work setting to be negative.42
A trend on campuses over the past twenty-five years is the increased use of part-time faculty.43 The issues for unionized faculty when part-time individuals are hired are that management has more flexibility in hiring and releasing part-time faculty and in determining the qualifications of the part-timers.44 The part-time faculty positions are rarely converted to full time positions. The part-time positions remain outside of the union contract, which gives management control over the configuration of the workforce.45
Thompson46 documented the employment of part-time faculty as a women's issue. Female faculty who had worked part-time for many years were denied full time employment when family responsibilities allowed them to do so.47 Often women faculty were piece making their positions so that they were actually teaching more hours than the full-time faculty yet receiving no benefits.48 At Rutgers University this situation came to such a crisis that in 1990 the part-time faculty were forced to form their own union in order achieve comparable academic and personal benefits to that of the full time faculty.49
In the 1990s the use of graduate-teaching assistants as part-time faculty is a problem for unionized faculties in higher education. In the past the NLRB ruled that teaching assistants were primarily students and not employees who could join a union.50 In California, New York, Illinois, and at Yale University graduate-teaching assistants have successfully unionized by having the states rule that they can be members of a faculty union.51 The primary issue for graduate-teaching assistants is that they carry a workload comparable to that of a full-time faculty member and yet receive minimal compensation.52 There are a few cases about this issue pending but the NLRB has not made any further rulings regarding the status of graduate-teaching assistants.
Tenure is an issue under collective bargaining agreements. For years, the concept of tenure was considered the sacred cow and there were rare instances on university campuses, both union and non-union, where tenured faculty members were placed in jeopardy. In Florida the state university system is experimenting with multiyear contracts as part of the collective bargaining agreement rather than incorporating tenure as a negotiable point.53 In Texas the state higher education system is mandating a post-tenure review be a part of the union contract.54 The underlying goal of the Texas state negotiators is to reduce the number of tenured faculty covered by the collective bargaining agreement.
The increase in technology is having an effect upon union negotiations.55 Courses on-line and distance learning techniques can greatly increase the number of students and still maintain the same faculty workload. The actual workload of student contacts increases while the number of faculty remains the same. The goals of union negotiations are changing to include support services for new technology projects, health and safety measures for the use of technology, and a clear definition of workloads that includes technology.56
The development of thirty years of collective bargaining in higher education has been in the public sector especially at community colleges. Research by Slemi and Brown showed that the initial effect of faculty unions is positive but the effect declines over time.57 The percentages of increases in salaries under collective bargaining agreements for higher education are comparable to that of industry at large.58 There is no research that demonstrates a comparison of the baseline compensation packages of faculties to their counterparts in business and industry.
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 There is an opinion that collective bargaining for a collaborative working model is a process and not an event.61
Collective bargaining in higher education had its beginnings in the 1960s in order to achieve higher salaries for faculty. Unions quickly developed at the community colleges, which are publicly owned and were rapidly increasing in numbers in the 1960s and 1970s. The four-year colleges and universities also had growth of unions during this time period. The 1980 Yeshiva Decision stopped the growth of unions in the public sector and even resulted in the decertification of collective bargaining units at some colleges.
Collective bargaining in higher education in the 1990s has had to deal with the increased use of part-time faculty and technology. 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. Despite these problems there continues to be a slow rate of growth of collective bargaining units for higher education in the public sector.
1. R.C. Kearney, Labor Relations in the Public Sector, 2d ed. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992), 132.
3. Frank Annuziato, "Unionization Among College Faculty," National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 23 (July/August 1995): 4.
4. American Association of University Professors, Statement on Collective Bargaining (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 1984).
5. Howard Millis and Edward Brown, From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), 4.
6. Ibid., 8.
7. Jules Getman and Bertrand Pogrebin, Labor Relations the Basic Processes, Law and Practice (Westbury, NY: The Foundation Press, 1988), 87.
8. Ibid., 92.
9. Op. cit., Millis and Brown, 18.
10. Op. cit., Getman and Pogrebin, 92.
11. Charles Russo, Walter Gordon, and Allen Miles, "Agency Shop Fees and the Supreme Court: Union Control and Academic Freedom," West's Education Law Quarterly 1 (Summer 1992): 227-83.
12. Clarence Wiley, "The Effect of Unionization on Community College Remuneration: An Overview," Community College Review 21 (January 1993): 52.
13. Op. cit., Kearney, 134.
15. Op. cit., Kearney, 135.
16. Frank K. Kremerer and J. Victor Baldridge, Unions on Campus (San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, 1976), 39.
17. Allen Ponack, Mark Thompson, and Wilfred Zerbe, "Collective Bargaining Goals of University Faculty," Research in Higher Education 33 (April 1992): 423.
18. Thomas Shipka, "Organizing the Faculty at Youngstown State," The NEA Higher Education Journal 17 (June, 1995): 105.
19. Op. cit., Annuziato, 10.
20. Randall Hurd and Alberta Foerster, "Unionization Among College Faculty: 1996," National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 24 (March/April 1996): 8.
21. Paul Johnston, Success While Others Fail: Social Movement and the Public Workforce (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1994), 46.
22. National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, 444 United States Supreme Court, 672 (1980).
23. Op. cit., Getman and Pogrebin, 111.
24. George Bodner, "The Implications of the Yeshiva University Decision for Collective Bargaining Rights of Faculty at Private and Public Institutions of Higher Education," Journal of College and University Law 7 (1980-81): 79.
25. Op. cit., NLRB v. Yeshiva University.
27. William Kaplin and Barbara Lee, The Law of Higher Education 3d ed. (San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, 1995), 184.
28. Op. cit., Bodner, 81.
29. Op. cit., Kaplin and Lee. 187.
30. Douglas Blum, "10 Years After High Court Limited Faculty Bargaining,
Merits of Academic Unionism Still Hotly Debated," The Chronicle of Higher Education 36 (January 31, 1990): A15.
31. Op. cit., Annuziato, 8.
32. Frank Annuziato, "Faculty Workload and Collective Bargaining," National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 23 (May/June 1995): 6.
33. Nancy McCain, "The Yeshiva Decision: Implications for Nursing Education," Nursing Outlook 33 (May 1985), 217.
34. Barbara Lee and James Begin, "Criteria for Evaluating the Managerial Status of College Faculty: Applications of Yeshiva University by the NLRB," Journal of College and University Law, 10 (1983-84), 516.
35. Duquesne University v. National Labor Relations Board, 261 United States Supreme Court 587, (1982).
36. Bradford College v. National Labor Relations Board, 261 United States Supreme Court 565, (1982).
37. Gary Rhoades, Managing ProfessionalsUnionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 17.
38. Ibid., 18.
40. Charles Hechscher, The New Unionism, (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988), 28.
41. Jim Putten, Michael McLendon, and Marvin Peterson, "Comparing Union and Nonunion Staff Perceptions in the Higher Education Work Environment," Research in Higher Education 38 (January 1997), 145.
42. Ibid., 146.
43. Gary Rhoades, "Reorganizing the faculty for Flexibility: Part-time Professional Labor," Journal of Higher Education 67 (June 1996), 632.
45. Ibid., 633.
46. Kenneth Thompson, "Piecework to Parity: Part-timers in Action," Thought & Action 8 (January 1992) 29.
48. Ibid., 31.
49. Ibid., 35.
50. Christine Leatherman and Dolores Magner, "Faculty and Graduate-Student Strife Over Job Issues Flares on Many Campuses," The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 29, 1996), A12.
51. Mary Cage, "Teaching Assistants Organize," The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 26, 1995), A15.
53. Mary Cage, "New Florida University to Offer Professors Alternative to Tenure," The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 6, 1995), A16.
55. Paul Monaghan, "Technology and Unions," The Chronicle of Higher Education (February 10, 1995), A17.
56. Ibid., A19.
57. Fehmida Slemi and Phyllis Brown, "Collective Bargaining Agreements in 1992," Monthly Labor Review 5 (May 1993), 22.
58. Op. cit., Wiley, 56.
59. Thomas DeMitchell and Walter Streshley, "Must Collaborative Bargaining Be Reformed in An Era of Reform?" International Journal of Educational Reform 5 (May 1996), 82.
60. Ibid., 78.
61. Don Crist, Jeanne Higman, and Fred Wall, "From Adversaries to Allies How to Build Trust at the Bargaining Table." The Executive Educator 19 (February 1996), 33.
Annuziato, Frank. "Faculty Workload and Collective Bargaining." National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 23(May/June 1995): 1-9.
_____________. "Unionization Among College Faculty." National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 23(July/august 1995): 1-12.
Blum, Douglas. "10 Years After High Court Limited Faculty Bargaining, Merits of Academic Unionism Still Hotly Debated." The Chronicle of Higher Education 36(January 31, 1990): A15-A16.
Bodner, George. "The Implications of the Yeshiva University Decision for Collective Bargaining, Rights of Faculty at Private and Public Institutions." Journal of College and University Law 7(1980-81): 78-99.
Bradford College v. National Labor Relations Board, 261 U.S. 565 (1982).
Cage, Mary. "New Florida University to Offer Professors Alternative to Tenure." The Chronicle of Higher Education 41(February 10, 1995): A17, A19.
____________ "Teaching Assistants Organize." The Chronicle of Higher Education 41(May 26, 1995): A15.
Crist, Don, Jeanne Higham and Fred Wall. "From Adversaries to Allies How to Build Trust at the Bargaining Table." The Executive Educator 19(February 1996): 32-33.
De Mitchell, Thomas and Walter Streshley. "Must Collaborative Bargaining Be Reformed in An Era of Reform?" International Journal of Educational Reform 1(May 1996): 78-85.
Duquesne University v. National Labor Relations Board, 261 U.S. 587 (1982).
Getman, Jules and Bertrand Pogrebin. Labor Relations the Basic Process, Law and Practice. Westbury, NY: The Foundation Press, 1988.
Hurd, Randall and Alberta Foerster. "Unionization Among College Faculty:1996." National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education & the Professions Newsletter 24(March/April 1996): 1-10.
Johnston, Paul. Success While Others Fail: Social Movement and the Public Workforce. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1994.
Kaplin, William and Barbara Lee. The Law of Higher Education. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, 1995.
Kearney, R.C. Labor Relations in the Public Sector. 2d ed. New York: Marcel Decker, 1992.
Kemerer, Frank R. and J. Victor Baldridge. Unions on Campus. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, 1976.
Leatherman, Christine and Dolores Magner. "Faculty and Graduate-Student Strife Over Job Issues Flares on Many Campuses.: The Chronicle of higher Education 42(November 29, 1996): A12-14.
Lee, Barbara and James Begin. "Criteria for Evaluating the Managerial Status of College Faculty: Applications of Yeshiva University by the NLRB." Journal of College and University Law 10(1983-84): 515-23.
McCain, Nancy. "The Yeshiva Decision: Implications for Nursing Education." Nursing Outlook 3(May1985): 216-7, 251.
National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, 444 U.S. 672 (1980).
Ponack, Allen, Mark Thompson and Wilfred Zerbe. "Collective Bargaining Goals of University Faculty." Research in Higher Education 33(April 1992): 415-30.
Putten, Jim, Michael McLendon, and Marvin Peterson. "Comparing Union and Nonunion Staff Perceptions of the Higher Education Work Environment." Research in Higher Education 38(January 1997): 131-49.
Rhoades, Gary. Managed Professionals Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor. Albany, NY:State University of New York Press, 1998.
____________. "Reorganizing the Faculty for Flexibility: Part-time Professional Labor." Journal for Higher Education 67(June 1996): 626-59.
Russo, Charles, Walter Gordon, and Allen Miles. "Agency Shop Fees and the Supreme Court: Union Control and Academic Freedom." West's Education Law Quarterly 1((Summer 1992): 227-83.
Shipka, Thomas. "Organizing the Faculty at Youngstown State." The NEA Higher Education Journal 78(June 1995): 105-16.
Slemi, Fehmuda and Phyllis Brown. "Collective Bargaining Agreements in 1992." Monthly Labor Review (May 1993): 22-3.
Thompson, Kenneth. "Piecework to Parity: Part-timers in Action." Thought & Action 8(January 1997): 48-57.
Wiley, Clarence. "The Effect of Unionization on Community College Remuneration: An Overview." Community College Review 21(January 1993): 48-57.
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