NUMBER FOURTEEN IN AN ONGOING SERIES
As we have argued before – most
extensively in Nick Burbules's recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education – shared governance depends on
mutually respectful relations between administrative and non-administrative
faculty colleagues; collective bargaining, in contrast, is adversarial by
nature. Faculty union advocates may deny that collective bargaining is adversarial,
but all you have to do is look north to UIC to see what a union fight actually looks like. And while some of our CFA
colleagues are personally respectful in their dealings with administrators, the
general tenor of their organization's discourse is often one of scorn, accusation, and ridicule.
There are differing views here about
which comes first: Does an adversarial state already exist between faculty and
administration, thus justifying the response of unionization – or does a
decision to unionize create adversarial relations? It is unlikely that this
chicken-and-egg debate can ever be settled, but our stance is clearly the
latter, for reasons we have already expressed. As further dramatic evidence we
cite some of the Comments written in
response to Burbules’s CHE article, which reveal the attitude of many faculty
on unionized campuses:
I do not view my administration
besides my department chair as my "partner." I view them as spies who
watch me and report to my department chair, who I really like . . .
"Shared governance"
implies shared power. But that is just what does not exist on most campuses. At
my university . . . no decision of any faculty body was in fact anything but
advisory. . . .
Public unions function to raise the
alarm over corrupt and incompetent administration.
Of course, the administration is
knee-capping faculty all the time. . . .
It was pleasant to share Prof.
Burbules's fantasy of 'shared governance' where 'faculty and administrators
view themselves as partners in a common project. . .'
White-collar workers today are
subject to the same management BS that blue-collar workers have been subject to
all along. If you’re not a high-level executive, the suits see you as a
fungible drone.
Does
this reflect your view of our campus? Of your work life? Of the administrators
you deal with? Are these the kinds of voices you want speaking for you as a
faculty member?
Then there was this exceptionally
cynical comment:
Prof. Burbules's comments remind me
of the attitude common among members of the AAUP many years ago who seemed to
think of relations between faculty and administration as high-minded
discussions between individuals sharing common goals and where professors were
'professionals.' Please note that the AAUP now endorses the union-management
paradigm and pursues collective bargaining. Why? Because college administrators
across the nation made it clear to the befuddled academics that they were
employees who served at the pleasure of their masters--and that when push came
to shove the 'collegial' relation between faculty and administration would
vanish into thin air to reveal the iron fist of power. Unions grew as a measure
of self-defense. To be without one is to be naked before one's enemies. I
define 'enemy' as any individual who is free to make decisions about my fate
that I am powerless to modify or reject.
Indeed, to this day, the mission of the
AAUP remains "to advance academic freedom and shared governance..."
and its cornerstone documents continue to emphasize the importance of cordial
relations among members of the faculty, upper administration, and the governing
boards.
We find it disheartening that there are
faculty committed to the processes of intellectual inquiry who prefer to launch
vituperative attacks against the administrative "enemy," and who
ridicule the idea of "high-minded discussions between individuals sharing
common goals" as a quaint, outmoded "fantasy."
For us, such values are intrinsic to
the principles of academic freedom and shared governance upon which the AAUP
was founded; and we have grave doubts about the future of any university campus
that loses sight of them.
The more we see how suspicious and
hateful the faculty attitudes are toward administration on other unionized
campuses, the more we appreciate the system of shared governance on the Urbana
campus that faculty leaders and faculty colleagues in the administration have
worked to create and preserve. It is not to be taken for granted – and it could
easily be lost.
*** 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. ***
