Education Commons^™

Northwestern University And College Athletes Players Association, Amy L. Rosenberger

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

While many public universities have been bargaining with student-employee unions for decades, the National Labor Relations Board has struggled with the notion of allowing bargaining on behalf of student-employees at private institutions. In recent years, the Board has twice changed course on the question, granting bargaining rights to graduate assistants at New York University in 2000, and four years later reversing itself in a case involving Brown University. The Board is now poised to rule on another case – this one involving student athletes at Northwestern University – which may present an opportunity to once again revisit the broader student-employee …

Academic Collective Bargaining: Patterns And Trends, Curtis R. Sproul, Neil Bucklew, Jeffery D. Houghton

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Educational services, particularly higher education, has slowly and methodically become one of the most heavily unionized segments, with much greater representation than traditional labor segments. Despite these changes, the increase in academic collective bargaining has not been well documented. Consequently, the purpose of the current paper is to examine recent trends in academic collective bargaining and to compare these trends with the current unionization and collective bargaining situation in other major industries in the United States. We begin with a comparative analysis of unionization in the United States by industry. The summary data we present indicate that the educational services …

Post-Recession Cbas: A Study Of Wage Increases In The Agreements Of Four State-Wide Faculty Unions, Steve Hicks

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The article looks at the post-Recession (2011) agreements of four state-wide faculties: California State system, SUNY, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Focusing on wages, the study starts with the context of state appropriations after the Recession and after ARRA. It finds that the agreements took longer, yet without job action, and each had a year with no salary increase, and some agreements include both no salary increase AND no seniority-based increase.

The Impact Of Unionization On University Performance, Mark Cassell, Odeh Halaseh

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

This study examines faculty unions’ impact on the organizational efficiency and effectiveness of public four-year institutions of higher learning. The article theorizes the causal connections between faculty unions to higher education performance. The study also presents results of a cross-sectional time series analysis and a cross-sectional analysis of higher education performance using data from the Department of Education’s Integrated Post Secondary Data System (IPEDS) spanning more than two decades and over 430 public universities and colleges. We find support for the view that unionization improves organizational efficiency and effectiveness. At the same time the research raises important methodological and substantive …

Collective Bargaining In Higher Education: Observations From An Ace Fellow, José Antonio Rosa Phd

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The author, a member of the 2013-2014 American Council on Education Fellows Class, offers observations and synthesis on factors affecting the viability and execution of collective bargaining in higher education. Building on the history of the academy, and taking into account environmental factors such as technology and social trends, the author proposes that greater senior leadership involvement, transparency, and flexibility may be needed for collective bargaining units in colleges and universities to be successful, as change continues to assail higher education.

From Ivory To Babel To A New Foundation, Richard Boris

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

During my 12 years at the NationalCenter for Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, I observed with increasing frustration the inability of administration and faculty leaders—union and governance—to fully grasp, analyze, and find pathways out of public higher education’s current existential crisis.

My many years of observing leaders of public higher education lead me to the inescapable conclusion that together the leaders share a culture that shorts strategic planning, thinking, and boldness and instead favors ad-hoc, incremental acceptance of the ever-changing, slimmed-down state of affairs. The rarified bubbles of presidential cabinets and union boards symbiotically promote policies that, …