Collective Bargaining Commons^™

Negotiating The Future: The Role Of Labor Unions In Responding To Automation And Technology Developments In The Entertainment Industry, João Branco Chaves

Student Publications

The entertainment industry has undergone profound changes due to the rapid advancement of automation and technology, significantly impacting the labor force behind its productions. Labor unions, such as the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA), have been at the forefront of negotiating contracts and protecting workers’ rights amidst these changes. This paper examines the pivotal role that labor unions play in shaping the negotiation processes within the entertainment industry, focusing on their contributions and challenges in responding to technological shifts. It also identifies gaps and contradictions in the research, …

Starbucks Workers United And The Future Of American Labor Activism, Sophia Drake Braymen

Honors Projects

This essay explores the goals, motivations, and methods of Starbucks Workers United (the campaign of the labor union Workers United that is aimed at organizing Starbucks employees), as well as the Starbucks Company’s response to it. The analysis is informed by the author’s interviews with both a Workers United organizer and a Starbucks corporate employee. This essay explores the position of Starbucks Workers United within the broader history of American labor activism and our current epoch of union decline, as well as what the recent breakthrough in cooperation between Workers United and Starbucks means for American workers going into the …

Some Thoughts Of Faculty Strikes, Margaret E. Winters, William Connellan

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

William Connellan is a long-time administrative-side academic labor specialist who spent much of his career at Oakland University (Michigan). What follows here is the result of an interview with him carried out by the author. After a general introduction to Bill, the institution, and to Michigan labor relations, the article focuses on Bill’s involvement in the many strikes called by the faculty union at Oakland during his tenure there. The article closes with Bill’s broader comments, that is, advice on negotiations and the handling of strikes from the administrative point of view.

Taup's 50-Year Collective Bargaining Story, Arthur Hochner

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

In the half-century history of faculty collective bargaining at Temple University, the Temple Association of University Professionals has faced numerous challenges. As a union leader for 31 of those years, I took part in many contract negotiations with tough-minded management representatives, including two long strikes. As universities have shifted away from tenure-track faculty toward more contingent ones, both full- and part-time, TAUP has made key adjustments and has grown. While I am now retired from Temple and the union, my successors continue to maintain faculty voice.

Analyzing The Upward Trend In Academic Unionization: Drivers And Influences, Andrea Clemons

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Over the last decade, the discourse on collective bargaining has evolved, shaped by the multifaceted challenges confronting contemporary higher education, including shifts in public perception and financial constraints. This article delves into the dynamic landscape of academic labor, highlighting its impact on tenured faculty, contingent faculty, and graduate students. The analysis encompasses the historical context of unionization, the transformation of academic labor structures, and present-day factors such as dissatisfaction with higher education, legislative mandates, and threats to academic freedom. The examination of recent legislative efforts in Florida, the article illustrates an ongoing trend and emphasizes the need for meaningful dialogues …

The 50 Year History Of Collective Bargaining At Hofstra University, Herman A. Berliner, Peter C. Daniel, Bernard J. Firestone, Estelle S. Gellman, Elizabeth J. Ploran, Liora P. Schmelkin

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The timeline of collective bargaining at Hofstra mirrors the timeline of the 50 National Center annual conferences. And the details of the Hofstra timeline, from organizing, to bargaining, from global issues to procedural details, from a bitter strike to collegiality, in an environment that respects both collective bargaining and shared governance, in a world without and then with COVID, provide a microcosm of the collective bargaining world over the decades. This article will start at the beginning of collective bargaining at Hofstra, reflect on social and economic changes during these 50 years, view the changing University aspirations, assess the impact …

The Role Of The Chief Negotiator In Academic Collective Bargaining, Nicholas Digiovanni Jr.

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Regardless of which side he or she is on, the chief negotiator is the face of the team, the representative of the institution or of the union. The negotiator must persuade, cajole, and otherwise advance his or her client’s proposals. He or she is responsible for assessing the impact of proposals, crafting effective contract language, judging the importance of different concessions, and, perhaps most important of all, maintaining the absolutely critical perspective as to what is crucial at the table and what is just noise. And finally, the chief negotiator sets a tone for the discussions, and his or her …

The Persistence Of Separate And Unequal: Debunking Myths Of The Market In Bargaining For Faculty Gender Salary Equity, Johanna E. Foster, Jen Mcgovern

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The Persistence of Separate and Unequal:

Debunking Myths of the Market in Bargaining for Faculty Gender Salary Equity

ABSTRACT

For over a century, feminists have challenged occupational gender segregation as a mechanism to rationalize the devaluing of work assigned to women. The social movement momentum in the second half of the twentieth century helped narrow gender pay gaps both within and across occupations. Recently, apologists for gender discrimination have gained ground in obfuscating the role of gender segregation in reproducing salary inequity, pointing to a black box of “market forces” that presumably account for the devaluing of feminized fields, inside …

Collective Bargaining Among Undergraduate Students, Daniel J. Julius, Nicholas Digiovanni Jr., Jai Abrams

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The questions we are focusing on in this essay concern; 1) to what extent are undergraduate students being organized for purposes of collective bargaining or covered by labor agreements (there are two major formats, first, unions comprised of only undergraduates and, secondly, where undergraduates are hired into employee classifications already represented by bargaining agents; the latter more common than many might expect) and 2), what impact, if any, does membership or involvement in unionization influence the undergraduate student experience (graduation and attrition rates, alumni involvement, positive or negative attitudes toward faculty or the institution, compensation, tuition, class time, shared governance, …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Review: A Working Model For Contingent Faculty, Courtney L. Werner

The Writing Center Journal

In his book A Working Model for Contingent Faculty, Robert Samuels presents multiple ideas for helping contingent faculty organize to gain equity on campus: in their careers, working conditions, and pay. Samuels critiques current prominent, negative discourse on contingent faculty, offering instead ways to emphasize contingent faculty’s diverse and positive experiences and opportunities. I offer additional insights spurred from Samuels’s ideas, including connecting with student government and finding ways to make writing center work and research more public and apparent to institutional stakeholders (e.g., students, faculty, donors, administrators, boards/trustees).

Discourses That Undermine Union Movements: A Multimodal Analysis Of Union-Busting Videos, Theresa A. Catalano, Julia Schleck

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Labor unions in the United States have experienced decades of decline, but recent years have seen a rebirth of union campaigns and successes. Because unions are once again becoming a threat to large companies, it is reasonable to assume that efforts to discourage organizing efforts will increase and become even more robust in the near future. Although traditionally, companies have worked to suspend union organizing through captive audience meetings in which unions were discussed via verbal or written modes, more recent means of reaching workers with anti-union messages incorporate a variety of communication strategies to get the message across. As …

Unions’ Impact On Firms’ Financial Decision Making: A Look At Right-To-Work Laws And Their Impact On Firms’ Leverage Decisions, Rachana Muvvala

CMC Senior Theses

I study the impact of unions on firms’ financial decision making by exploring their capital structure, specifically leverage. I test two opposing hypotheses to understand the relationship between unions and firms’ leverage: (1) the bargaining hypothesis which suggests that firms use higher leverage as a bargaining device with unions, and (2) the crowding-out hypothesis which suggests that firms have lower leverage because unions crowd out their debt capacity due to their perceived riskiness. Focusing on the 2007 to 2022 period, I examine right-to-work (RTW) laws, since they are exogenous shocks that decrease union power in five different states. Then, I …

Three Essays On Corporate Debt Contracting And Innovation, Olaleye Morohunfolu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation comprises three essays investigating topics in Corporate Debt Contracting and Innovation. The first essay examines the relation between Passive Institutional Ownership (IO) and debt covenants. Using Russell 1000/2000 annual index reconstitution as a source of exogenous variation in passive IO, I find that passive IO leads to reduced covenants in the bond market. Specifically, I find that passive IO leads to reduced (a) Investment, (b) Dividend restriction, and (c) Subsequent financing restriction. However, I observe weaker results for loan covenants, implying that loans, usually collateralized, are less sensitive to changes in passive ownership. The overall effect of passive …