Collective Bargaining

Contract Agreement at Wright State

In late September, the AAUP chapter at Wright State University in Ohio signed its first contract and workload agreement with the university covering about 180 fulltime non-tenure-eligible faculty members, giving them unprecedented job security and other benefits.

Navigating Troubled Waters at the NLRB

Since the US Supreme Court’s infamous NLRB v. Yeshiva University decision in 1980, faculty members at private colleges and universities have confronted major roadblocks to unionization. Yeshiva labels most tenure-track faculty as “managerial,” excluding them from the right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Now, more than thirty years later, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has signaled its interest in opening greater possibilities for faculty unionization.

One Historian’s Perspective on Academic Freedom and the AAUP

It’s our brand: academic freedom. Whatever else the AAUP does, the defense of academic freedom is what distinguishes it from every other organization. As the American system of higher education has evolved, so, too, has the Association’s mission, but despite embracing collective bargaining and the provision of other services to the professoriate, the AAUP has not abandoned its central concern with protecting the professional autonomy and intellectual integrity of the nation’s faculties.

Settlement at Portland State

The Portland State University AAUP chapter reached a contract settlement in April after voting overwhelmingly in March to authorize a strike. As the strike approached, the bargaining teams entered into a twenty-four-hour marathon session of mediation that ended with an agreement. 

Chicago Faculty Strike for Fair Pay

After a year and a half of contract negotiations—sixty bargaining sessions, with little progress—the faculty union at the University of Illinois at Chicago went on a two-day strike in February. The members of UIC United Faculty, which represents tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty in separate units and is affiliated jointly with the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, demonstrated on campus during the strike, along with other supporters of the union. At issue was the question of salary, particularly for nontenured faculty.

How Managerial are Faculty?

The AAUP submitted an amicus brief to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in March, urging the board to consider the full context when determining whether faculty at private colleges are managerial. The brief describes the significant changes in university hierarchical and decision-making models since the US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that faculty at Yeshiva University were managerial employees and thus ineligible to unionize. That ruling has seriously hampered the ability of private-college faculties to engage in collective bargaining. 

New Union for New Hampshire Lecturers

In February, lecturers at the University of New Hampshire voted overwhelmingly to form a union affiliated with the AAUP. Lecturers at UNH hold full-time positions but are not eligible for tenure. Tenured and probationary faculty on campus are already represented by another AAUP chapter, AAUPUNH, whose president, Deanna Wood, told the student newspaper that “we’ve waited twenty-four years to have a sister union on campus amongst the teaching faculty, and we are just ecstatic.

Cincinnati Contract Ratified

After more than a year of bargaining, members of the University of Cincinnati AAUP chapter voted overwhelmingly on March 9 to ratify a new three-year contract. One especially contentious point in negotiations was an administration plan that would have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled employee health-care costs, depending on salary level. With a planned protest of a board meeting and mounting public pressure, however, the bargaining team and the administration were able to contain increases in health insurance premiums at 25 percent in the second and third years of the contract. 

Equity Innovation Award for Oregon Union

The University of Oregon administration has awarded the institution’s faculty union the UO Equity Innovation Award in recognition of the union’s effort to incorporate standards of inclusion into its recent contract. The union, United Academics, is affiliated jointly with the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers. Under the new contract, the tenure and promotions process will include consideration of faculty work to improve equity and inclusion on campus.

How Did We Get Here?

The call to the initial meeting of the Association included “collective action” among the proposed purposes but did not include collective bargaining. For the next fifty years the AAUP’s leaders not only rejected trade unionism but also discouraged any campus-level activism by AAUP chapters that would, they believed, supplant the role of the general faculty.

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