THE SENATE WE NEED

NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN IN AN ONGOING SERIES 

The Senate’s record of aggressive, effective representation of faculty concerns hardly needs to be rehearsed. Not too long ago, the Senate called for doing away with the Chief mascot, and though it took much too long, eventually the Board was forced to accede to faculty demands, over the objections of students and alums. (The NCAA helped.) The Senate challenged the $20 million Global Campus initiative, and it was dismantled. The Senate exposed the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government, and it was booted off campus, and now is a mostly empty shell. The Senate demanded accountability from administrators over the admissions scandal, and a Chancellor and a President had to step down. More recently, another President resigned after the Senate made clear that it wouldn’t tolerate his disregard for faculty views and his antipathy toward shared governance processes. Last summer, a Senate task force developed a broad and ambitious set of proposals to improve the compensation and working conditions of faculty. The list could go on . . .

Repeatedly and forcefully, the campus Senate has used its processes to represent faculty interests and protect the integrity of the structures of shared governance. In all these instances, senators who happened to be CFA members and senators who were not worked together toward common goals. Most Senators neither knew nor cared who were CFA members and who were not, and CFA members of the Senate didn’t wear their affiliation across their chests. Longtime members of the UPE (the former name for the CFA), and later the CFA, worked within the Senate structures to effect positive changes on behalf of the faculty, their departmental constituencies, and the campus. No one worried about who got credit when the Senate was successful: the SENATE got credit.

Unfortunately, those days seem to be gone. CFA has stated its intention to focus its energies on organizing a faculty collective bargaining unit, and so it must justify the need for a union to represent the faculty’s voice and interests. To do so, it must portray the campus Senate as toothless, “merely advisory.” Shared governance, they say, is weak, and needs “strengthening” (by a faculty union). Even some CFA members who are members of the Senate have expressed scorn for its efficacy and its achievements.

And, when the Senate’s accomplishments become impossible to ignore, the CFA has been quick to take credit: the only possible motivation for changes beneficial to faculty is the threat of unionization. If administrators work with faculty leaders to respond to faculty concerns, it can’t be out of good will or an honest concern for the faculty – it must be out of fear of a union.

If you read the faculty testimonials on the CFA blog, what is most striking is that they make almost no mention of the traditional union issues of wages, hours, and working conditions. Instead, they say that faculty need a “voice,” that they need a way to influence campus policies, academic and otherwise, that they need to demand transparency from administrators and hold them accountable. Many of these testimonials seem to be premised on the assumption that there is no independent faculty voice. They say we need “shared governance,” a term that the union has tried to appropriate as theirs because they know it has positive resonance with faculty – a resonance that the Senate, through its effective advocacy for and defense of faculty rights, has created.

One would think, reading the testimonials’ repeated insistence on the need for “a strong faculty voice,” that the Senate had disappeared, or had suddenly become powerless and empty. One would think the colleagues writing those statements were unaware of the Senate’s history on our campus and its documented record in providing a democratically elected, strong faculty voice.

We don’t know what CFA representatives are saying to faculty members in their office visits to create such a deep misimpression. But here is the fact: We have an extremely strong and effective Senate, and we respect and acknowledge the contribution that all Senators have made to keeping it strong. The accomplishments of shared governance on this campus have been real and substantive – and clearly go far beyond the “merely advisory.”

It is sad that the CFA apparently has decided that they need to make the Senate appear weaker in order to make themselves appear stronger. The Senate and shared governance are not perfect; on the contrary, what has enabled the Senate to create the strong record it has is its constant practice of examining itself in order to improve the state of shared governance on our campus. The Senate recognizes the need to work continually at making itself more representative of, and responsive to, the voices of all faculty.

We also need to take the elements that make shared governance effective at the campus and university levels, and spread that culture of collegial, shared decision-making down to governance at the college and departmental levels. Senate leaders, and committees of the Senate, have publicly acknowledged this need, have moved to address it, and will not be satisfied until shared governance is consistently enacted across all our academic units.

But the tools and resources to strengthen shared governance already exist in the University Statutes, and in the structures of the Senate. Any attempt to draw authority away from those statutes and structures, or to denigrate them, will weaken shared governance, not strengthen it.

The Senate we need is one in which all faculty are committed to its value, its processes, and its tradition of advocacy for faculty concerns. Shared governance is strongest when we all support that commitment.

***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.***

CONTRACT SETTLEMENT REACHED AT UIC

Like everyone who cares about this university, we are relieved to see a settlement of the contract dispute at UIC with no further strikes.  

Since the details of the contract have not been made public, we will withhold any judgment on that.

But we will be particularly interested to see whether faculty at UIC will do better under their union contract than our faculty have done WITHOUT one.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Here is the UIC tenure-track contract.

THE DARK SIDE

NUMBER TWENTY-SIX IN AN ONGOING SERIES

When we decided to begin this blog, one thing was very clear to us: We would sign all posts with our real names. We committed ourselves not to post anything that we could not stand behind in public. We wanted to be scrupulous in our own factual claims, if we were going to call union organizers out for playing fast and loose with the facts. As we say in every blog post, our credibility is essential: if someone lets us know about errors in anything we post here, we will immediately remove or correct them.

We regard this basic commitment to intellectual honesty and fair play as integral to our identities as university professors, even when we are debating a basically political issue.

Recently, we’ve been made aware of a new blog (“Learning and Labor”) that provides an excellent illustration of what happens when these principles go awry.

The posts are anonymous. The blog both is, and is not, associated with the Campus Faculty Association. The “About” link says that the blog is written by a group of faculty members who support the CFA and its call for a faculty union:

Learning and Labor supports the efforts of the Campus Faculty Association to unionize both non-tenure-track and tenure-track faculty at UIUC. However, we think CFA does not always go far enough in calling out the “powers-that-be” and their minions. That’s our job!

Having declared their aim to support the CFA agenda and supplement CFA’s blog and Facebook page with harder-hitting material, they immediately relieve the CFA of any responsibility for what they write:

CFA has asked us to make it clear that we speak only for ourselves as individual bloggers, not for CFA or any other organization.

Yet there is clearly an association between these projects. The CFA Facebook page links to and endorses this blog (“Great new blog”).

Recent posts from Learning and Labor and from CFA deal with the same themes, sometimes using almost identical language. Here’s an example on the new campus policies on non-tenure-track faculty:

http://cfaillinois.org/2014/04/12/dear-alma-should-shall-and-will/

http://learningandlabor.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/should-and-shall/

Here’s another example, on the campus’s plan to hire 500 new faculty:

https://www.facebook.com/CampusFacultyAssociation/posts/552768018133583?stream_ref=10

http://learningandlabor.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/500-is-not-enough/

There is clearly some coordination and overlap of themes. These are not separate or independent projects.

And, of course, the campus motto, “Learning and Labor,” has long been invoked by the CFA and featured on the header of its websites.

You can tell this is a very sensitive issue, because the Learning and Labor bloggers found it necessary to issue this vehement disclaimer:

Rumor has it that some disaffected faculty are blaming the Campus Faculty Association for the messages on this site. If you take the trouble to READ “About Learning and Labor” you will see that this site belongs to a group of individual faculty members who generally support, but do NOT in any way speak for CFA. This is not a CFA blog! Repeat: This is not a CFA blog! Got it?

Note to our colleagues: when you are a group of CFA members who echo the CFA party line and are endorsed by the CFA, it’s a CFA blog.

Methinks the blogger doth protest too much!

What this blog clearly represents is a venue for unnamed CFA members to issue harsh personal attacks without CFA being held responsible for them. This good cop/bad cop strategy is familiar from many activist movements over the years.

It allows the CFA to take the high road with postings about Martin Luther King and Gandhi (union supporters!), while maintaining deniability for the hostile rhetoric of Learning and Labor.

For example, one of the recent “Learning and Labor” posts consists of a diatribe against two conscientious faculty colleagues who went public with their concerns about their names being listed in a CFA brochure entitled, “We Support the Faculty Union” (neither does). In separate accounts, they explained how they were misled by organizers into signing a statement that never uses the phrase “faculty union,” and how dismayed they were to see their names used publicly when they explicitly asked organizers not to do so:

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor/2014-04-03/cfa-misused-name-union-brochure.html

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor/2014-04-09/cfa-misrepresentation-creates-opposition.html

Both authors are quite consistent about what was said to them and what they themselves said, in independent accounts (reinforced by the way, by many more faculty who have had similar experiences).

Here, in its entirety, is the Learning and Labor response:

Professorial Reading Skills Questioned

So–two letters in the local newsrag from faculty who claim they were deceived–deceived!!– by union organizers into adding their names to the list of union supporters. They claim they thought signing only indicated an interest in “further discussion of the issue,” not any actual support for unionization. And they were shocked–shocked!!–to learn that their names had been included in a CFA publication called We Support the Faculty Union. 

Well, who knows what was going through the heads of these two individuals at the time they signed the CFA’s petition. But if they really thought that they were doing nothing more than expressing interest in “further discussion,” one does have to question their reading skills. The petition that I signed (and that presumably they also signed) consisted of the CFA mission statement (available here: http://cfaillinois.org/about/), followed by these words: 

“I support the Mission Statement of the Campus Faculty Association, including the pursuit of collective bargaining rights for UIUC faculty, and authorize the use of my name in support of this statement.” 

Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to sign anything without reading it first?

The bloggers insist that they are not speaking for the CFA while furiously defending the CFA when it is being criticized. And it is interesting to ask how a supposedly unaffiliated group got their hands on the exact language of the faculty union petition, which, to our knowledge, the CFA organizing committee has never made public.

Learning and Labor, while ostensibly serving the aim of unifying the faculty as part of an organized union, seems to see no contradiction in lashing out at faculty colleagues they perceive as threats.

One wouldn’t think that the CFA needed a new venue for blasting the “powers that be and their minions.” Recent examples from their own web sites include:

http://cfaillinois.org/2014/03/08/dear-alma/

http://cfaillinois.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/bot_candidateethics41.jpg

http://cfaillinois.org/2013/05/02/state-university-inc-episode-nine/

And the “minions,” apparently, include the two of us:

He Who Shall Not Be Named

A faculty member on this campus, who shall here remain nameless, is rabidly anti-union. The blog he publishes is (to say the least) bizarre, full of overheated rhetoric depicting pro-union faculty members as reptiles–slimy, secretive, deceitful vermin who worm (yes, I know worms aren’t reptiles, but the verb works . . .) their way into the confidence of innocent little professors and trick them into supporting unionization. He is not above using direct insults, as well as distortions, half-truths, and great big whoppers to attack those of us on the other side of the issue. . . . Now normally I don’t read this blog, because it makes me smoke at the ears. But my friends occasionally send me passages from it, attached to messages like “Is he insane?” . . .

We find it strange that this post ignores the explicit co-authorship of our blog, and all the postings on it. We DO put our names on what we write. It is fascinating that these anonymous bloggers erase our identities, turning our blog into one written by “He Who Shall Not Be Named.”

The irony of rewriting our project through their own rhetorical lens is striking. There is nothing even remotely approaching a reference in our blog to “slimy, secretive, deceitful vermin.” These are their terms, not ours. This is how THEY engage in debate: by comparing Nick Burbules to Voldemort, and, in case it's not enough to depict him as the embodiment of evil, calling him "insane" as well.

Nor do they give a single example of the “distortions, half-truths, and great big whoppers” we are supposedly promulgating. As we have said, we would correct them if we were.

The Learning and Labor entries are also full of references to “Our Beloved Chancellor,” “Our Beloved Provost,” and on and on. These are just samples of the level of discourse you will find on the “great new blog” that is being trumpeted on the CFA Facebook page. 

They say that it is bad strategy to link to and give extra air time to the views of your opponents. In this case we are happy to draw readers’ attention to this piece of work. Nothing more clearly shows the seamy underside of the faculty union drive on our campus and the sort of discursive climate they are creating here. 

We reject the cowardly attacks of “Learning and Labor.” The actions of its authors are unworthy of our profession, slandering their own colleagues under the protection of an “Invisibility Cloak.”

***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.***

THINGS THEY AREN’T TELLING YOU (PART TWO)

NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE IN AN ONGOING SERIES

The CFA has put out another new publication entitled, “Faculty Union Basics,” which presents the organization’s version of how a faculty union would operate on our campus. Like many of their informative postings, what is most revealing is what they choose NOT to tell people.

The brochure begins by repeating a well-worn list of the benefits faculty unionization would supposedly have. There is no down side, no danger, no risk. In the real world, we know that EVERY complex decision has an upside and a downside, benefits as well as costs. 

Once again, faculty life under the collective bargaining regime is envisioned here as all benefit, with no cost whatsoever. That’s not an honest or realistic assessment. It’s a fantasy.

The faculty union organizers go on to comment that their preferred form of campaigning – through a closed-door, one-on-one recruitment campaign instead of an open, public election – “requires the highest level of faculty support.” No explanation is offered for the counterintuitive claim that organizers have purposely chosen the most difficult method. However, the AAUP manual for union organizers provides a more accurate explanation:

Organizing campaigns often begin slowly and only “go public” when the organizers (the OC) are confident that they have majority support.

Before going public, but after you have built a considerable OC, there is often a lengthy period of extensive office visiting with future members to identify issues, to educate them on issues about which they may not be fully aware, and to get them ready for future actions (including signing union authorization cards).

One-on-one visits led by OC members and other volunteers are the single most important component of any organizing campaign. It is in these visits that the OC learns how to define the struggles that their future members face and the issues that they feel are paramount, and it is in these visits that support for unionization is consolidated.

In fact, union organizers are now going to people’s private homes to try to recruit them. (They aren’t telling you that, either.)

The new information booklet does represent a departure from previous publications in the current CFA campaign in that it directly broaches the subject of who would be included in “the union.” But it does so in a way that does not clarify the most important aspect of this question: the separation of tenure-track faculty and non-tenure-track faculty. In Section 3, we find this passage: “At the University of Illinois, all tenured and tenure-track faculty members with an academic appointment of .51 FTE or greater are eligible to be part of the union. . . For purposes of collective bargaining, Illinois labor law divides faculty into separate categories, known as bargaining units. In the case of the University of Illinois, faculty members who have tenure or tenure-track appointments fall into a different bargaining unit than non-tenure-track faculty. Both groups may belong to the same union, but each bargaining unit will have to negotiate its own contract.”

As we have pointed out elsewhere, this formulation continues to obscure the fact that current state labor law dictates not only that different bargaining units hold separate negotiations with their employer and write completely separate contracts, but also that the initial organization of each of these bargaining units must be carried out via separate elections or card campaigns.

We do not know why such a crucial point is elided in a publication that claims to be about providing faculty with objective, accurate information about the union campaign. The fact is that, after the brochure was released – and after we had called them on this misrepresentation – CFA had to explain this point on their blog : “Tenured/tenure-track faculty and non-tenure track faculty must form separate bargaining units (Section 3) – and of course a majority is required in each bargaining unit in order for that unit to gain legal recognition.”

They say “of course,” but to our knowledge this is the first time they have affirmed this legal requirement publicly. Ironically, offering this clarification now calls into question the many previous instances on their website, Facebook page, and public statements that made no separation between the organizing aims of tenure-track faculty and those of non-tenure-track faculty. On the contrary, the entirety is presented as a mass of support for “the” [sic] union. There is no consideration of issues over which the interests of each of these groups may be in conflict, or how such a conflict would be resolved. There is no acknowledgement of the obvious question of why the campaign for NTT unionization is being waged by a tenure-track-faculty-dominated organization that until very recently had very little involvement with or concern over NTT issues – and not by an autonomous group led by and representing NTTs themselves.

The brochure also repeats another assertion we have heard many times before: “Faculty unions aspire to be democratic organizations. They typically develop their own constitutions, elect their own officers, manage their own resources and determine their own priorities. The general membership normally approves all major decisions.” What this statement neglects to emphasize is that only full dues-paying members have a voice in these “democratic organizations” – NOT the campus faculty generally. This, in spite of the fact that the CFA admits that they plan to demand that those who choose not to become union members and pay full dues will still be required to pay “fair share dues.”

In contrast to the campus Senate and other shared governance bodies, campus faculty would not be eligible to run for union office or vote on their union representatives, policies, negotiating priorities, or tactics such as strikes unless they pay full dues – though the union would still be representing itself as speaking for “the faculty,” and not just for its members.

The brochure goes on to celebrate the virtues of collective bargaining, but does not identify any of the specific issues union advocates would be emphasizing in their campaign. As we will discuss in detail in a later post, the basic argument is “first create a union, and then find out what union representatives will be negotiating for.”

In Section 5, the brochure says, “Faculty unions are much more common than people think. Nationwide, about 29% of all academic faculty at four year colleges and universities are unionized. Historically, though, few top-tier research universities in the United States have unionized.”

Actually, 29% is much less common than we would have guessed. We leave it to you to decide whether this university should stake its future on a decision that fewer than a third of universities have seen fit to adopt. And you can judge whether Rutgers, Florida, Oregon, UIC and the SUNY campuses are “top-tier research universities.” The fact remains that they are not schools our campus identifies as peer institutions.

We also wonder whether it helps their case to look to UIC as a positive example, where negotiations have dragged on unproductively for almost two years, and where there has already been one faculty strike and a threat of another. On the contrary, as we have pointed out, what has happened as a result of UIC faculty unionization serves as a dramatic illustration of why our own campus should not want that.

In Section 6, the brochure cites some contract details at Florida and Rutgers. This strategy has always puzzled us. Pointing to what was negotiated at other schools, with different institutional structures, faculty cultures, histories, and state contexts, tells us nothing about what would be negotiated here. The troubled case of UIC is a much better predictor, because (1) it is part of the same university family, (2) the union there is affiliated with, and advised by, exactly the same state and national unions as would be connected to this campus, and (3) union advocates here have themselves cited UIC as their model.

In Section 7, reasons are given for affiliation with state and national unions. Again, this is only described in terms of benefits, with no mention of costs or potential downsides. The Illinois Federation of Teachers and American Federation of Teachers primarily represent public school personnel. It is far from clear whether the interests of university faculty are always compatible with the interests of public school educators – for example, in lobbying for levels of state funding and support. So when the brochure says, “Unions engage in lobbying at the state and national level on issues that affect their members,” one must question how the interests of university faculty will weigh against the much greater numbers of non-university union members. Nor does the brochure tell people that the university already has a lobbying team that works aggressively for the interests of this campus and its members. Its concerns are solely focused on the University of Illinois, not any other constituent group.

Section 8 asks “What Would a Faculty Union Look Like at UIUC?” Here again we are given the rose-colored view with very few specifics.

What is clear is that despite statements here and elsewhere that the union would seek to strengthen the Senate, the broad goals being espoused by union advocates would directly interfere with the statutory authority of the Senate and shared governance system. In fact, one of the sticking points at UIC has been the union demand to rewrite sections of the Statutes, and the union there is already demanding that the union as such must be represented in campus and university governance bodies.

We have seen in our Senate that members from CFA have, until very recently, identified themselves as representing and speaking for that body (one member referred to the CFA as “my constituency”). We have seen CFA representatives regularly attending public Senate Executive Committee meetings and identifying themselves as “CFA observers.” Most recently, CFA officers who are not Senate members have requested blanket “floor privileges” to speak for the CFA position as a part of regular Senate deliberations whether they relate directly to CFA/union concerns or not.

Unions (where established) are defined by state law as authorized to negotiate “wages, hours, and working conditions.” A union is not a statutorily authorized campus constituency or governance entity. Union advocates here and at UIC have consistently blurred that difference, raising further unanswered questions about how they would act if they ever were formally established on this campus.

The CFA has made expansive claims elsewhere that the union would address “issues like pensions, clear promotion processes, diversity, equity, class size, quality and cost of education, and the transparency of administrative decision-making . . . improvements for contingent faculty, increased transparency in promotion procedures, ownership of intellectual property, protection for the powers of the Senate, teaching loads, class size, the physical condition of facilities, and provision of teaching assistants for large classes . . .” They have, somewhat obliquely, expressed concerns about online courses and programs, without saying what their position on that subject might be.

What they are not telling you is that all of these issues are already dealt with through the shared governance system, and some of them are adjudicated explicitly in University-wide governing documents that have been approved by all three campus senates. If a union were to attempt to collectively bargain demands about any of these issues, it would inevitably infringe on the role of the Senate to represent all faculty (not just dues-paying union members) over issues of campus policy – especially but not only academic policy.

***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.***

CREDIBILITY GAP

NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR IN AN ONGOING SERIES 

In January 2014, union organizers on campus distributed a glossy brochure entitled, “We Support the Faculty Union” (sic: there is no faculty union).

It included a number of featured advocates and testimonials, and on the inside cover listed about 700 names in fine print.

Immediately after, CFA held a public event at which they claimed that they were “very close” to having support from a majority of faculty.

A News-Gazette article about the event cited CFA spokeswoman Susan Davis:

The group has been asking faculty to sign a statement of support over the past year. Davis wouldn’t disclose numbers but said the group has won commitments from “very close to a majority” of the about 1,800 tenure-track and nontenure-track faculty it believes could be part of a bargaining unit.

How can we evaluate this claim? The CFA has been asked in the Senate for clarification about the numbers they are claiming, and they have provided none. Given the close timing between their distribution of the brochure and their announcement, we only have the names listed in the brochure as evidence of their support. (You can debate whether 700 is “very close” to a majority of 1800.)

But even the list of 700 who supposedly support a faculty union includes a significant number of errors.

First, the CFA has said that colleagues are being asked to sign the CFA “mission statement.” But this cannot be counted as indicating support for a faculty union. The word “union” does not even appear in the mission statement. A number of people have reported to us that, when CFA and state and national union representatives visited them in their offices, they were told that signing the mission statement only indicated that they thought the option of forming a faculty union was worth exploring. They signed the statement to indicate that they had an open mind about the issue, but had not made a decision, much less a commitment.

To count these people as supporters or to claim their numbers as a predictor of who would actually sign a legally binding union card is misleading – and it raises the question once again of what is actually being said and promised to people in these closed-door office visits.

Second, the CFA list of names includes many emeritus faculty, other retirees, and non-tenure-track faculty who would not be eligible to vote in a card campaign to establish a tenure-track faculty union. These people may support the establishment of a faculty union, but they cannot be counted as evidence for the claim that organizers are very close to a majority of voters.

Third, considering the Davis quote more closely raises the question of whether organizers would be combining tenure-track and non-tenure track voters in order to reach a majority. There are around 1800 tenure-track faculty in the proposed bargaining unit (which does not include faculty in Law and Vet Med). A state appeals court has ruled that non-tenure track faculty would have to be organized in a separate potential bargaining unit. Tenure-track faculty members cannot sign cards for a non-tenure-track bargaining unit, nor vice-versa. The figure of 1800 Davis is reported to be basing her calculations on cannot refer to “a bargaining unit” that contains both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members.

Fourth, we have heard from a number of colleagues who have told us that they never gave permission for their names to be included in the brochure, and who do not support establishing a union. 
 

In fact, there are at least sixteen names claimed on CFA’s list as supporters who have signed our statement OPPOSING a faculty union, which in just a few weeks has grown to over 300 signatures and counting.

Considering all this evidence, it is clear that the CFA has done a very poor job of checking whether the names they claim as supporters actually are supporters who would be willing and eligible to sign a union card.

The fact that they are claiming supporters who are clearly not supporters and blurring the legal requirement that they have to achieve TWO separate majorities, one for a tenure-track campaign and one for a non-tenure-track campaign, does not bode well for how carefully they would manage a card campaign, if they ever held one.
 

***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.***

NO CLASS

NUMBER TWENTY-THREE IN AN ONGOING SERIES

On the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, a large percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty reject the formation of a collective bargaining unit to represent them. Colleagues who have publicly expressed this position come from virtually every academic field and from a wide range of personal backgrounds and ideological positions. In fact, you could say that the rejection of the tenure-track collective bargaining campaign has been a truly unifying, spontaneous grass-roots effort: individual allegiances to one political ideology or another have taken a back seat to a common conviction that, far from making our campus a better place, collective bargaining for those in the tenure track would damage academic quality and create an adversarial campus climate that would lower the quality of our working conditions.

We are already seeing indicators of what that adversarial campus climate would look like.  

Union advocates have taken to consistently characterizing any questions about the merits of unionization as “anti-union,” and even sometimes as right-wing. These are not just labels attached to positions, but to people. Those daring to take the other side have been called everything from “anti-union activists” to right-to-work “propagandists” to “reactionary” to “racist, sexist, and elitist,” simply because they do not support the formation of a collective bargaining unit for tenure-track faculty members on our campus. 

We feel no need to justify our own progressive credentials or to respond to absurd allegations that we’ve gone over to the dark side and are now lackeys of the Koch Brothers. We trust the majority of our colleagues to recognize the difference between reasoned debate and personal attacks. 

But the deeper point is that it is precisely BECAUSE we are progressive academics from the working class that we oppose unionization for UIUC tenure-track faculty members. We know through experience what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck, to not know whether the doctor’s bills will be covered, and to come home bone-tired from a day of physical labor. We have worked in jobs where talking back to the boss meant getting fired, where the time we spent in bathroom breaks was carefully monitored, where there was serious risk of physical injury, where we were grateful for those days when there was time to chat with co-workers. We know what it is like to work in a job where workers really do need a union to fight for fair wages, to make sure overtime work is paid, and to promote safe working conditions. 

It is because we have had those experiences that we understand and appreciate the contributions made by labor unions in the history of this country. As minimum-wage workers, we benefited directly from many of those advances. And because we have had those experiences, we know that tenure-track professors are very far indeed from being exploited workers who need a collective bargaining unit to provide “voice” for them. The simple fact is that the life of a tenured faculty member, especially at an elite university like this one, is one of the most privileged jobs imaginable: extremely flexible hours, little to no supervision, an almost entirely self-directed work load, and a nine-month salary that, even at the lower ends, is well above the national average. 

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t serious problems and inequities to work on, especially for our non-tenure-track colleagues. But it seems incongruous and insensitive to say things like the following:

“I teach, therefore I am exploited” 

“Faculty ARE workers”  

“It has never been clearer that universities are more like other workplaces than different from them.”  

We can only imagine how claims like this sound to the many people who work very long hours at dangerous or demeaning, low-paying jobs – some of whom can only hope that their children will attend college one day. There are times for university faculty to advocate for and stand in solidarity with the working-class; but not by denying our privileged status and pretending to be as oppressed as those whose working conditions many have never experienced. 

We have talked elsewhere in this blog about the polarizing discourse of union advocates that “You are either with us or against us.” There is another aspect of that rhetoric. It rests on the simple-minded assumption that all aspects of progressivism stand or fall together: that everyone who supports income equality, rejects racism and sexism, advocates for the right of individuals to love whoever they want and to define their gender as they wish, must of necessity also support unionism in all forms, in all places, and under all circumstances. It’s a stance that assumes that, for every issue, there is a right side and a wrong side to be on, a stance that demands, in the words of the classic union song, “Which side are you on?” 

It’s a disciplining tactic that demands that all good progressives fall in line, and stands in stark contrast to the expectations of free speech and academic freedom that faculty union advocates elsewhere insist upon. To question any part of that doctrine is to throw one’s entire credibility into doubt – regardless of one’s actual record of progressive scholarship, effort, and commitment.  

This divisive, polarizing attitude is far more dangerous than the infantile name-calling that is its most apparent symptom. If a faculty union ever were to be established on this campus, would any public attempts to question its strategies and goals be greeted with the same personal attacks and charges of political disloyalty?  

***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.***

ADDRESSING NON-TENURE-TRACK CONCERNS

NUMBER TWENTY-TWO IN AN ONGOING SERIES

News accounts of the faculty strike at UIC have highlighted the demand for higher salaries for full-time non-tenure-track faculty members. The news that UIC employs some full-time NTT’s at a yearly salary of only $30,000 is upsetting to many of us.

We note that the average salary for non-tenure-track faculty members with nine-month contracts on our campus is twice that: $60,300, considerably higher than the national average of $51,374, in a geographical location where the cost of living is fairly low.

More detailed salary numbers for our campus were provided by the News Gazette 

$58,711 for the 240 NTT faculty on the teaching track
$64,793 for the 65 on the research track
$76,697 for the 58 on the clinical track 

We are proud of the campus’s efforts and accomplishments in this area, compared to the horror stories we read about on other campuses. But there is more work to be done. We think it’s important to address the unacceptably low salaries still being paid to some non-tenure-track faculty members, their lack of promotion paths, and the lack of clear processes and criteria for hiring, evaluating, reappointing, and dismissing non-tenure-track faculty. That’s why we worked with other Senate leaders and the Provost’s office to help develop a set of proposals that would advance and support colleagues working off the tenure track on our campus -- including an attempt to find a better descriptor for them than a label that defines them in negative terms. Frankly, we think such new policies are long overdue.

At the same time, we want to draw attention to the unfortunate politicization of non-tenure-track issues on our campus. The campaign to unionize tenure-track faculty at Urbana has been around for at least four decades. But during all that time, the status of instructional and research staff who work off the tenure track scarcely figured in the campaign – until just a few months ago.

Before the Summer of 2013, the concerns of campus academic colleagues who work off the tenure track were rarely mentioned in the current and earlier websites of campus faculty union organizers. We do believe that the commitment of tenure-track union organizers to advocate for our non-tenure-track colleagues is sincere. But they have not always shown it in their support of Senate initiatives addressing those concerns.

For example: when the proposal to create a Task Force on Faculty Issues and Concerns was first brought before the Senate last spring, CFA members in the Senate challenged the right of the Senate to explore these issues, but never said a single word about adding non-tenure-track issues to its charge.

When the Task Force issued its report in September, the Senate suddenly heard repeated complaints from some of the same people that the report was flawed because it did not address NTT issues. If these issues were so essential, CFA could have raised them when the Task Force was first formed, but they did not. Something seemed to have changed over the summer.

The irony is that despite its charge, the Task Force actually did delve into some NTT concerns. But the CFA still continued to denigrate its accomplishments.

Another example: in 2010, a Senate ad hoc committee spent several months studying our hiring, reappointment, and dismissal practices for non-tenure-track faculty, and made several recommendations for regularization of these practices. Members of the Office of the Provost built on those recommendations and recently issued a draft policy document outlining promotion paths for “specialized faculty members” and mandating that processes of evaluation, reappointment, and nonreappointment be made explicit.

These proposals were discussed and endorsed by a wide range of campus groups, including two Senate committees and Senate leadership. Yet they were dismissed by union advocates:

Jan 27: the Administration floating suggestions on how departments might choose to reorganize the titles, wages and working conditions of non-tenure-track faculty. Non-tenure-track faculty deserve more than recommendations: they deserve a binding contract that guarantees improved wages, terms of employment and working conditions.

And when the Provost proposals were brought to the full Senate for review, the predominant response of CFA Senators was critical, and they blocked an effort to vote on even a broad endorsement of the principles embedded in the report.

Yet, again, something shifted: less than a month later, CFA members started redefining their position as supportive of the proposals, though they wanted to propose modifications to them:

Feb 21: CFA is encouraged by the steps outlined in the Provost’s draft report about “specialized faculty”. A number of faculty – some CFA supporters and some not – spoke up at a recent Senate meeting to propose basic improvements to the plan. The Provost’s office has responded positively to some of these. We are fostering further discussion, to make sure there is input from NTTs across campus on this issue. We hope the document can be finalized and issued soon, as CFA strongly supports the benefits it will bring to all non-tenure-track colleagues.

We applaud this reversal of CFA’s position, and their willingness to work within the shared governance framework to propose improvements to the proposed policies, rather than just criticizing them as insufficient. 

But the simple fact is that all current campus policies addressing non-tenure-track concerns began with or were developed through the framework of the Senate and its processes, usually without – and sometimes despite the resistance of – union advocates.

And recent assertions by the CFA notwithstanding, many of these initiatives, such as the successful pursuit of multiyear contract rights for non-tenure-track faculty, long preceded the current union campaign.

Undoubtedly, there is still work left to be done, including much-needed conversations about the underlying causes for the gradual increase in reliance on non-tenure-track faculty to teach undergraduate classes, and how to deal with those trends in effective and equitable ways. These are matters that require thoughtful deliberation among tenure and non-tenure-track faculty, along with institutional leaders, within a framework of shared governance that encourages constructive collaboration. 

The status of non-tenure-track faculty members should be an ongoing concern of anyone who cares about the quality of education and research at the University of Illinois. Respect for these colleagues and their contributions to our campus demands that they be recognized and treated fairly. That is the aim we have been pursuing through the Senate, with clear and demonstrable success. To make the concerns of this group of colleagues just one more plank in a union campaign platform, without acknowledging the very real progress we have made on this issue so far, is unworthy of them and of our campus’s commitment to excellence and to equity in the workplace.

Update: The new campus policies for non-tenure track (“specialized”) faculty are final: http://provost.illinois.edu/communication/25/ProvostCommNo25_SpecializedFaculty.pdf.
 
***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.***