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Unionization And The Development Of Policies For Non-Tenure Track Faculty: A Comparative Study Of Research Universities, Karen Halverson Cross

Karen Halverson Cross

This paper examines how policies at several research universities support and professionalize their full-time, non-tenure track (NTT) instructional faculty, and considers the influence of NTT faculty unions on policy development at these institutions. Faculty handbooks, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), and other policy documents at a few institutions with and without CBAs were analyzed for the presence of institutional, NTT faculty-supportive policies. One unionized and one non-unionized institution were selected as sites for interviews with faculty and administrators. The paper finds CBAs to be a significant source of NTT faculty-supportive policies, and the union to provide important procedural safeguards against arbitrary …