On February 4, 2013, the Senate sponsored a debate
between senators Randy McCarthy and Nick Burbules on the pros and cons of
faculty unionization.
You can find links to both presentations in the
right-hand margin here.
The Campus Faculty Association gave high visibility to Randy McCarthy’s presentation, but responded obliquely
to Nick Burbules's presentation by reframing the points he made as "Myths about
Faculty Unions" -- straw men for them to knock down.
Here are the “Myths” from the CFA website, and our
responses:
Myth #1: “Unionization is unprofessional.”
Many professionals in addition to college
professors are unionized and have improved their lives and working conditions
with collective bargaining contracts. Doctors, lawyers, screenwriters,
dentists, nurses, actors, musicians, engineers, librarians, teachers,
journalists, and many more professionals belong to unions.
There is a large scholarly literature on the
history of the professions, and how certain occupations secured certain occupational
privileges, including high status and better salary. As these authors show, by
and large these developments had nothing to do with being part of unions.
(See, for example, Andrew Abbott, “The Order of Professionalization” Work and Occupations, Vol. 18 (1991): 355-384.)
Some professional groups have formed unions, true,
but many of the most important and influential professional associations (such
as the American Medical Association, the National Society of Professional Engineers
and – yes – the American Association of University Professors) are not unions. And their broad membership
and credibility come from the fact that while they advocate for the rights and responsibilities
of their members, it is not within a union framework. You’ve heard of the AMA –
how about the UAPD?
No one (in this country) talks about doctors going
on strike.
The myth
here is that unionization is a no-cost choice with only benefits ahead. Any
honest, serious consideration of the issue would have to consider what might be
lost as well as what might be gained.
To take one example, the state of Illinois has
passed a law requiring all state employees to keep a detailed record of their
working hours: administrators and staff of the University of Illinois already
do so. The only reason this requirement hasn’t been imposed on faculty is the
argument that tenure-track faculty aren’t like regular employees. Would faculty
unionization erode that argument?
Would specific union strategies like rallies,
protests, and real or threatened strikes affect the way the legislature,
business leaders, and citizens of the state of Illinois view us? Would public
faculty demands for higher salaries alienate tuition-paying parents and
taxpayers?
Some facts: In 2012, the median annual salary in Illinois was $46, 983, which represents a decrease of 4.56% when compared to 2009. The average
tenure-track faculty salary on our campus last year was $106, 733 and for non-tenure track $60,300,
an increase since 2009.
Myth #2: “If we have
a faculty union, we’ll lose status…. ”
Faculty unions don’t destroy universities or
their standing. The rankings of universities like Rutgers and SUNY have risen
since they unionized faculty more than 40 years ago. There is no evidence that
faculty unions negatively affect membership in the American Association of
Universities or the rankings of research, graduate and undergraduate schools.
Note that our peers at Oxford and Cambridge,
and at the University of Toronto in Canada are unionized, as are university
professors in most other countries, including those at internationally ranked
universities.
The fact is that very few AAU universities are
unionized, and none of the
universities we would identify as peers (and prime competitors for faculty). Private
universities have (according to TIAA-CREF) a 24% average salary advantage in hiring
away our best faculty without unions.
Citing universities in other countries is irrelevant, because the funding and
general structure of higher education in other countries is significantly
different than in the United States.
Yes, the
rankings of some of the universities mentioned have gone up after unionization.
But, as we try to remind our first-year students, correlation does not imply
causation. That’s another myth.
Myth #3: “If we have
a faculty union, our ‘stars’ will leave!”
It is unlikely that our star professors will
leave if we form a union. Faculty leave UIUC for a range of reasons. In the
last few years, many have taken early retirement out of fear of diminished
retirement benefits. Other reasons include salaries that are lower than peer
institutions, program cuts, surging workloads and rising class sizes, heavy
service demands and repetitive program reviews. All UIUC faculty members know
we are doing more with less, and the centralization of funding means we will be
asked to do even more in the future. . .
Well, our CFA colleagues can say that they think it
is unlikely that top faculty will leave if the campus unionizes – but the fact
is this is what many of our top faculty members have said. We disbelieve them at our peril.
Certainly we lose good people for all sorts of
personal and professional reasons. The implication in this posting, however, is
that unionization will make the situation better
and not worse.
But this is
another myth. The fact is that no one
will know that until after a union decision has been made. By then, whatever
the consequences, it will be too late because the decision to unionize is
virtually irreversible. Analogies made to other schools that are dissimilar to
ours obscure rather than illuminate the issues.
[Continued here]
[Continued here]
*** This
blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track
faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a
faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine
our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned
nationwide praise.
We speak for
ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we
don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us.
We want to
start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we
believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts.
We
welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns
about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility
of working on a unionized campus.
If you see
any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it.
If you share
our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends
and colleagues, and urge them to do the same. ***
