Labor Relations Commons^™

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’S Perspective, Steve Hicks, Amy L. Rosenberger

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time.

Bargaining Market Equity Adjustments By Rank And Discipline, Jonathan P. Blitz, Jeffrey F. Cross

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Faculty contract negotiations generally include wages, hours, and other conditions of employment as well as mutually agreed non-mandatory subjects of bargaining. Negotiators typically address wages in terms of across-the-board increases, promotion in rank, merit increases, and one-time signing bonuses. Less typically, faculty salary negotiations include various forms of equity adjustments and salary increases linked to the underlying market and social forces and to salary compression that may, or may not, be related to these forces. The authors describe how they negotiated differential discipline-specific target salaries based in part on College and University Personnel Association faculty salary data.

Collective Begging At Its Best: Labor-Management Relations In South Dakota, Gary Aguiar

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Public employee labor unions in South Dakota possess a feeble set of bargaining rights, so weak it should be considered “collective begging.” However, our recent contract contains significant victories despite decades of playing defense. What lessons can be learned from this experience that might help other similarly situated faculty unions? What does this case study teach us about the disparity of power, especially where labor has fewer legal and political tools than management? I apply DiGiovanni’s (2011) typology of “intangible influences” on collective bargaining to explain our success. As DiGiovanni predicts, history and timing played a large role in influencing …

Organizational Culture, Knowledge Structures, And Relational Messages In Organizational Negotiation: A Systems Approach, Vincent P. Cavataio, Robert S. Hinck

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

This study examines a recent bargaining process between the Faculty Association and Central Michigan University. Taking a systems approach, we began with the assumption that a healthy organizational culture produces negative feedback which can help keep participants at the bargaining table despite disagreement. However, if organizational members’ relationships are threatened, organizational culture unravels as destructive messages provide positive feedback to disrupt the system and make impasse more likely. To understand how an university’s culture is impacted during contract negotiations we examined messages published in a university student newspaper, transcripts from the local NPR station, CMU’s press releases, a Facebook page, …

Shelter From The Storm: Rekindling Research On Collective Bargaining And Representation Issues, William A. Herbert

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions (National Center) is a four-decade old institution that is supported by and located at Hunter College, City University of New York. The National Center was founded in the wake of the granting of collective bargaining rights by various states and localities to public employees including higher education faculty members and shortly after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asserted jurisdiction over private institutions of higher education.

Consistent with its mission, the National Center intends to be an engine for rekindling, incubating and promoting research and …

Positive Collaboration: Beyond Labor Conflict And Labor Peace, Richard Boris

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Institutions of higher education collectively constitute a major economic concentration that ranks—by whatever measure: resources, budgets, endowments, employees, constituencies—among the major industries in the United States. The unionized academic U.S. workforce ranks sixth among organized labor. Yet, when compared to the top-tier manufacturing industries of steel or automobile or to national unions such as the UAW or the Teamsters, both the public institutions of higher education and their academic unions lack national visibility, lack influence on national debates, and, most tellingly, lack major successes in the quest for public monies. Health care, the environment, energy policies, and the current global …

The Impact Of Unionization On University Performance: A Cross-Sectional Time Series Analysis, Mark K. Cassell

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

In 1968 the union movement in higher education was launched on the CUNY campuses in New York when CUNY held the first academic labor union election on an “integrated, heterogeneous, multi-campus system” (Ladd and Lipset 1973). In the nearly five decades since that historic election, unionization has grown to cover more than a third of all public four-year institutions and 40 percent of faculty at those public institutions (see Figure 1). While unionization is more common at larger institutions, Figure 1 illustrates that even among the smallest public institutions, unionization has increased over time.

The Fiscal Crisis Of The Campus: The View From California, R. Jeffrey Lustig

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The significance of the disinvestment in American baccalaureate, Ph.D. and community college institutions in recent years can hardly be exaggerated. The quandary posed by the attendant reduced funding goes beyond issues of crowded classrooms and dilapidated facilities; ultimately it questions whether our higher education will continue to be a gateway to equality and guarantor of opportunity, a path to broader horizons for citizens—or if it will be transformed into a bulwark of social inequality and vehicle for narrow vocational instruction.

Determining how to successfully grapple with this decline in funding is hindered, however, by the ways in which policy-makers and …

Financing Higher Education: Privatization, Resistance And Renewal, Gerald Turkel

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The fiscal crisis of higher education currently is being resolved largely through a financing policy of privatization, a pattern that increasingly shifts responsibility to individual students and their families. The politics of privatization makes it ever more difficult for lower-income students to attend college and has become a major financial burden for middle-income people. Beyond the direct financial consequences, privatization has increasingly subordinated the research and educational missions of higher education to the countervailing imperatives of economic growth and competitiveness. Privatization has enhanced the entrepreneurial and corporate features of universities and colleges, increasingly shifting the values of higher education away …

The Fiscal Crisis Of The Campus: The View From California, R. Jeffrey Lustig

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Over the last generation, state governments have undertaken a major disinvestment in higher education. The questions raised by these funding reductions go beyond matters of crowded classrooms, dilapidated facilities, and altered pedagogies to challenge the basic function of college and university education in the United States. Will higher education continue to be the gateway to equality and provider of broad horizons for citizens, or will it be transformed into a bulwark of social privilege and narrow conveyor of vocational skills for private consumers? These are the ultimate questions posed by the funding priorities of the state legislatures in America today.

Financing Higher Education: Privatization, Resistance, And Renewal, Gerald Turkel

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Higher education’s financial crisis is being resolved largely through a politics of privatization, changing patterns of financing that increasingly shift responsibilities to individual students and their families. The politics of privatization makes it ever more difficult for low income students to attend college and has become a major financial burden for middle income people. Beyond cost shifting, privatization has increasingly subordinated the research and educational missions of higher education to imperatives of economic growth and competitiveness. Privatization has enhanced the entrepreneurial and corporate features of universities and colleges, changing the values of higher education away from notions of common property …

Social Networking And Faculty Discipline: A Pennsylvania Case Points Toward Confrontational Times, Requiring Collective Bargaining Attention, James Ottavio Castagnera, John Lanza Iv

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

While social-networking sites like Facebook are still relatively new to the working world, employers monitoring their employee’s activities and conduct outside the workplace is not. The most alluring aspects of social-networking sites is the ease in which an account can be created and maintained, the personalization options they present to the user, and a uniquely 21st century way of keeping in contact with friends and family. Social-networking sites are truly a wonder of the modern age, where by typing out a few sentences, uploading some photographs, videos and making some friend requests, one can present his or her entire life …