ON HIATUS

The tenured faculty union movement at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has died down, and for now we are giving this site a rest. We are quite ready to renew postings, and even expand the effort, if and when the debate over unionization returns.

In the meantime, we hope that these resources help inform tenured faculty union debates elsewhere. We still get visits to this site.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

NUMBER THIRTY-THREE IN AN ONGOING SERIES

State and national union organizations (the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Association of University Professors) have invested considerable staff time and resources into the faculty union campaign on this campus. Have you wondered why?

Two words: Big Money.

These organizations will receive a hefty chunk of the money earned by faculty via union member dues and “fair share” dues automatically charged to non-members within the bargaining unit. We have collected some rough numbers to give you an idea of how much money we are talking about.

The campus Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) admirably provides full information about their finances on their web page. We want to note here the striking contrast with the faculty and student unions up at UIC, who provide none of this detail, and for that matter our own Campus Faculty Association, which makes this information available only to its members, and only upon request.

The GEO is affiliated with the IFT, the AFT, and the AFL-CIO rather than the AAUP. They collect 2% dues on gross salary, which in 2013 totaled $772,837. Of that, $525,529 (68%) went to these external organizations. They explain on their web site what these funds are used for, but it is clear that nowhere near a half million dollars of resources and services come back to the campus each year.

The GEO charges all graduate employees the 2% rate, making no distinction between regular membership and fair share dues. This seems to belie the rationale for fair share dues: the AAUP says that fair share dues should cover only “costs . . . that are germane to the Chapter's legal duties to represent you.” Since these are only a subset of the overall activities unions use dues for, fair share dues clearly should be less than full membership dues.

It is worth noting that the same situation exists up at UIC.

Furthermore, within our campus GEO fewer than half the students choose to be fully dues-paying members: in the current year, 2014, 53.2% are paying “fair share” dues. Up at UIC, even more remarkably, none of their GEO members are paying membership dues; they are all “fair share”!

How can you claim that your union is “democratic” when less than half of your constituency choose to be members? It seems reasonable to require that unions maintain a membership of over 50% of the members of the bargaining unit. Yet when this condition was written into the UIC faculty contract, union negotiators condemned it as an “anti-union” provision.

The “specialized” (non-tenure-track) faculty on this campus have chosen to unionize, but dues rates and other money matters have not been settled yet.

We also don’t know what the AAUP would charge faculty unions, compared to the AFL-CIO. But we do know that they just increased the per-member rate they charge to campuses for union affiliation for adjunct faculty and grad students, hiking it from $46 per member to $75 (that’s a 63% increase).

So what revenues would a tenure-track faculty union yield for these outside organizations? Excluding faculty from Law, Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine, who would not be eligible for a union, and estimating the dues at 1% of salary, membership and fair share dues would generate over $2 million annually. If the percentage transferred to outside organizations is roughly comparable to what the GEO is paying (68%), that would be about $1.4 million each year from tenure-track faculty – plus, of course, the half million already being transferred by the GEO, and plus whatever the non-tenure-track faculty union would be collecting and transferring.

That would total well over $2 million dollars a year transferred to outside union organizations from this campus: every year, year after year, in steadily increasing amounts.

For the CFA, this would mean about $600,000 a year from tenure-track faculty, plus whatever they get from their portion of non-tenure-track faculty dues. That’s more than 20 times what they are currently receiving from faculty ($31,745 in 2013). What would they do with such a windfall?

It’s big money, indeed. You can see why they are fighting so hard to get it.

And without a discount for “fair share” dues, all faculty would be paying the same amount whether they choose to be in the union or not. That is inconsistent with the AAUP guidelines, and a distortion of what “fair share” dues mean.

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.***  

THE SALAITA CONTROVERSY AND UNIONIZATION

NUMBER THIRTY-TWO IN AN ONGOING SERIES

The Campus Faculty Association has seized on the controversy over the Chancellor’s decision not to proceed with the hiring of Steven Salaita as one more reason why we need a tenure-track faculty union.

This is hardly surprising. Over the years, their reasons for arguing the merits of unionization have constantly shifted. Whenever anything happens to upset the faculty on the campus, the CFA sees it as an opportunity to advance their cause, claiming that if our faculty were unionized, those bad things wouldn’t have happened.

Here is the fact: whatever one thinks about the Salaita issue (and we fully understand that there are deep disagreements over it), the existence of a union would have done NOTHING to prevent it. No administration, and no Board of Trustees, is ever going to sign a union contract giving faculty search committees – much less unions – final say over hiring. Because state law entrusts the oversight of the University to its Board of Trustees, there is always going to be a level of upper administrative review, and that means there is always going to be the possibility of a faculty recommendation not being accepted by accountable administrators.

That is why the Senate Executive Committee is exploring a consultation procedure that will clarify the limits and controls on such decisions in the future.

With a union we would be having exactly the same arguments over whether academic freedom protects Salaita’s speech, over whether “civility” is a campus value that can legitimately enter into hiring decisions, over how faculty members’ public profiles related to their fields of expertise in social media are relevant to their identities on campus or in the classroom. These are unresolved issues because they are difficult and in fundamental dispute. A union’s pronouncements would not change that.

The one thing that could be different is that a union might threaten to strike over this issue. Is that what CFA means when it says a union would solve this problem? If so, they should say it.

We have some other questions about the CFA’s position on this issue.

What is the CFA’s position on the boycott against this campus? Here is what the primary national petition says:

In solidarity with the Campus Faculty Association of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), which has called upon Chancellor Wise to reverse her decision to revoke the offer of appointment made to Professor Steven Salaita in October 2013, and in consultation with concerned faculty members at UIUC.

--- Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

These “concerned faculty” are not named, and CFA says on their Facebook page that “CFA is not part of the boycott movement.” But since the boycott organizers claim to stand “in solidarity” with the CFA, it seems likely that at least some of the anonymous “concerned faculty members” are associated with the CFA. 

Are members of the CFA actively working to support and encourage a boycott against their own campus?

The CFA claims to have nothing to do with the boycott, but every single link posted on their website about the boycott links to a site supporting it. Why haven’t they spoken out against a boycott that is damaging our campus?

And, finally, what is the CFA’s position on the vote of no confidence from American Indian Studies and two other small departments against Chancellor Wise? Are they going to stand as an organization in favor of a campus-wide vote of no confidence?

We are tempted to borrow one of CFA’s ear-horn photos.

WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.*** 

WHEN A FLOOR BECOMES A CEILING

NUMBER THIRTY-ONE IN AN ONGOING SERIES

Union advocates on this campus want to represent themselves as the tireless advocates for faculty salary improvement.

But let’s look at the facts.

For the past three years, our campus has exceeded the university-wide minimum for salary increases. This came as a result of close collaboration between senate leaders and administrators within the shared governance framework, not as a result of collective bargaining.

These increases surpassed what the UIC faculty union negotiated, retroactively, after two years of acrimonious fighting, a strike – and a threatened, even bigger, second strike.

In fact, the UIC union used Urbana’s higher increases as the benchmark for what they tried to get – unsuccessfully.

If you subtract union dues, the net salary increase for the Chicago faculty comes off even worse.

This year our campus increment was the same as was negotiated by the union at UIC: a 2.5% base increase, and an additional 1% for “compression, merit, equity, and retention” (CMER).

The CFA praised this increase, somehow thinking that we should give the UIC union credit for our increase on this campus. But, in fact, making our salary increments the same as those specified in UIC’s contract HURTS our faculty, because our salary increases have actually been better than UIC’s over the past several years.

Apparently it is more important for the CFA to support their union colleagues at UIC than to advocate strongly for faculty interests here.

Meanwhile, the Compensation Review Committee created by last summer’s Senate Task Force, which the CFA opposed, issued a carefully detailed and data-driven analysis of where our campus salaries need to be enhanced.

The CRC showed that on average our campus salaries are almost 3% behind those of our peers (and prime competitors) for faculty, and in some units as much as 10% behind. They call for a concerted plan to eliminate this gap, emphasizing especially those campus units that are furthest behind.

The Chancellor and Provost have publicly embraced the recommendations of the CRC report and are committed to addressing these problems.

But there is no way that the gaps between the salaries on our campus and on our peer campuses can be remedied if we follow the CFA’s apparent notion that we ought to match what we do on this campus to equal the increases provided on the other U of I campuses.

In effect, what was negotiated by the union at UIC as a salary floor has become a salary ceiling for all the campuses. This may be represented by the CFA as a victory for solidarity, but it is not good for our faculty.

Meanwhile, the Senate’s Compensation Review Committee also strongly endorsed the development of a supplementary retirement program for faculty, a topic on which the CFA has been virtually silent.

On our campus, it is the Senate and its committees who are pushing to improve faculty salaries and retirement options, and are committed to continuing to do so: the CRC report recommends formalizing the ad hoc committee, and producing an annual report on how well we are doing to address salary concerns and doing an in-depth analysis of the competitiveness of our total compensation package every three years.

The perpetual promise that some day, somehow, faculty unionization will remedy campus salary deficiencies needs to be matched against the actual progress that shared governance – faculty working collaboratively with the administration – has achieved for our campus.

This belies the repeated CFA claim that the Senate is powerless to do anything to improve salaries.

And, unlike a union, the Senate does not tax the faculty at the level of 1% or more of their salary every year.

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.***

TRANSPARENCY FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME

NUMBER THIRTY IN AN ONGOING SERIES

On May 14, the CFA announced on its website that a petition had been presented to the Illinois Labor Board to form a collective bargaining unit of non-tenure-track (“specialized”) faculty members on the Urbana campus. We were surprised by this news because, on April 7, we had been told by union organizers at a campus meeting that no card campaign had begun and that, while representatives of the national organization had flown in to spend some time on campus, it was only to gauge the degree of interest in forming a bargaining unit. We were disconcerted when we later read that “the card drive began shortly after the conclusion of spring break.” 

If ”shortly” is to be understood as within a week, the card campaign had in fact begun when we were being assured that it had not.

No law requires union organizers to announce when they have begun a card campaign. And it was in their interest not to announce the beginning of the card campaign, as the AAUP organizing manual makes clear: “Organizing campaigns often begin slowly and only ‘go public’ when the organizers (the OC) are confident that they have majority support.”

But we have to ask, Is this the way to make fundamental policy decisions affecting faculty on this campus?

Being the optimists that we are, we like to think that people try to act on the principles that they espouse. The CFA has regularly lambasted “The Administration” and their own campus Senate for what it considers breaches of the commitment to transparency -- most recently here. We don’t think it is unreasonable to expect that faculty colleagues would be shown the respect and courtesy of being informed when such a crucial initiative had begun, after two years of public controversy over the matter, particularly when it was spearheaded by an organization whose mission statement claims that it “will work for transparency in all . . decision-making.” 

Apparently the CFA is committed to pressing for other people’s transparency; but their own is a different matter.

More specifically, at the February 10 meeting of the campus senate, three questions were posed to campus Senators who were CFA members:

1. Has the card campaign begun? If not, upon what is the estimate of “near-majority” support based?

2. Does CFA estimate that they have majority support of tenure track faculty and also of non-tenure-track faculty – or have they combined the two groups in estimating their support? If the latter, are they aware of recent court ruling in UIC case that this was not legal?

3. Why have union organizers chosen to conduct a door-to-door signature campaign instead of having an open election?

After a conspicuous silence, one member of the CFA’s union organizing committee stood up and promised to bring answers to the next Senate meeting. In a follow-up email, she repeated that commitment. The Senate met again on March 10, and the questions went unanswered. On April 14, when the card campaign had in fact begun, there was an excellent opportunity for the CFA to announce that fact at that day’s Senate meeting, which ended with ample time to spare. Silence. By May 5, when the Senate held its last meeting of the 2013-14 academic year, and when union organizers were intensely engaged in a no-holds-barred attempt to persuade specialized faculty to sign union cards, once again no mention was made of the card campaign. Nine days later, we read that the card campaign was over and that the petition had been filed with the Illinois Labor Board.

We have repeatedly called for the CFA to live up to its stated commitments to transparency and democratic processes and to have a public debate and vote on unionization that is open, truly democratic, and participatory for all those affected by a possible union decision. 

Instead, they have opted for a process that is begun in secret, carried out in secret, in which only those in favor of a union get to vote, and which is only announced publicly once the decision is already made. We won’t speak for non-tenure-track faculty, but tenure-track faculty members will be justifiably furious if that ploy is used again.

We would expect our CFA colleagues to be outraged if any administrator were to undertake a major campus transformation and only tell the faculty about it after it was implemented. Why is a decision to unionize non-tenure-track or tenure-track faculty different?

Here is one difference: an administrative policy can usually be reversed. But Illinois labor law makes a decision to unionize very difficult to change. . . which helps to explain the strategy of only announcing a vote once it is a fait accompli.

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.***

HOT HEADS

NUMBER TWENTY-NINE IN AN ONGOING SERIES

We have frequently expressed concern here about the intemperate rhetoric used in public statements by some campus advocates of faculty unionization, a rhetoric that assumes an adversarial division between The Faculty and The Administration. Repeatedly, university leadership is portrayed as a clueless, insensitive, untrustworthy entity that cannot understand, much less support, the rights of faculty. Hence faculty need a union that will “fight” the evil administrators to protect them; “an independent voice” to protest their inevitable ill-treatment at the hands of the bosses.

There is always a need to question and to hold leaders accountable – and no one knows this better than we do. But this dichotomous Us/Them picture of the university is inaccurate and unfair. Even more than that, it is self-perpetuating: it actually creates a hostile, suspicious campus climate, by encouraging knee-jerk reactions based on the assumption that the motives of administrators are base and self-serving, and those of their faculty critics pure and selfless.

How anyone could claim that this attitude is compatible with “shared governance” is a mystery. You can’t share responsibility with people you fundamentally despise and mistrust – and you can’t expect people you speak about that way to be willing to share responsibility with you.

The latest example of this tendency is the CFA’s all-out, ad hominem assault on “the arrogant, ignorant, narrow-minded, authoritarian chairman of our Board of Trustees, Mr. Christopher Kennedy,” including a declaration in the CFA spinoff blog “Learning and Labor” that he is “Unfit for Office.”

And just in case that is too subtle, this slander is reinforced by a cartoonish CFA-authored caricature of a monster who doesn’t care about “shared governance, due process, or academic freedom.” (None of which Kennedy ever said.)

It is entirely legitimate to correct misstatements and to challenge positions that one finds objectionable. But the venomous hatred expressed in these portrayals suggests something more than simply a desire to correct misstatements, representing them not as mistakes to be corrected but as evidence of a fundamental ignorance about the university and of hostility toward faculty (especially non-tenure-track faculty), which no one who has actually interacted with Chris Kennedy could ever imagine to be true.

Apparently, it is easy to forget that it was this same Chris Kennedy who recently pointed out the dire circumstances of many non-tenure-track faculty and the need to remedy them. No recognition is given of any achievements of the current Board, and its Chair, nor of its laudable overall record (especially compared with some predecessors) for integrity and aggressive advocacy for the university.

There is always room for fair criticism and disagreement. But when you look at the tone and hostility in this latest round of CFA comments, you have to wonder what a campus would look like in which these people were the main spokespeople and representatives of the faculty in regularly dealing with the administration.

CFA representatives keep saying they don’t desire or expect that unionization would create an adversarial relationship between faculty and administrators. And they keep proving that untrue.

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.***

A DEAFENING SILENCE

NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT IN AN ONGOING SERIES 

On April 26, when the approved UIC faculty union contracts were finally released, the CFA promised “summaries of the UIC contracts with comment later today.”

Post by Campus Faculty Association.

Though they had some immediate positive things to say about the non-tenure track faculty contract, we heard nothing from them about the tenure-track contract. 

This silence is hardly surprising, since a simple comparison between what the union has secured for faculty at UIC, and what has been achieved on this campus without a union, is not very helpful for their case.

First, the UIC contract provides back pay for faculty during the two years that negotiations dragged on: 2.5% for 2012-13, and 3.25% for 2013-14, with an additional 1% for compression and equity raises (total: 6.75% over two years). During this same two-year period, faculty on this campus received 4.3% and 4.16% increases, a total of almost 8.5%, paid in full and on time in the normal salary cycle. (In fact, the UIC union used Urbana’s higher salaries as the benchmark for their salary demands.)

Salaries for next year have not been set and were not addressed in this contract, so no comparison is possible. Nor have dues levels been settled yet – but everyone should remember that any salary increases need to be offset by dues payments that are deducted directly from people’s paychecks. Hence, the net salary increases at UIC are even further behind what faculty, without paying dues, have received here.

Second, the threshold for promotion bonuses at UIC is set at 10% of salary. On this campus they are set at $7000 for promotion to Associate and $10,000 for promotion to Full, in addition to whatever raises faculty receive from their departments. Last year the average promotion bonus for faculty on this campus was over 14%.

Third, the UIC contract offers a “one-time, non-recurring reimbursement” of up to $1500 for research or professional development. On the Urbana campus, thanks to the Humanities and Arts Scholar Support program, faculty in those units received $1,000 for such purposes annually between 2008 and 2013, when the amount was raised to $1500. These funds recur every year. Many faculty receive more than this in research support from their departments, and all faculty have access to additional support from the Research Board.

Fourth, despite claims by the union that faculty governance needs “strengthening,” the contract leaves all statutory and existing governance structures in place: “Neither the University nor the Union intend that any of the terms of this Agreement abridge or diminish the roles of the faculty or the University as established in University Statutes . . . The parties to this Agreement recognize and support the role of the Faculty Senate as established by the University of Illinois Statutes.” We are encouraged by this recognition that shared governance is an effective and independent mechanism to express the voices and interests of the faculty, fully outside the control of the union.

Fifth, we note that a provision was included in the contract that would allow the union to collect “fair share dues” from faculty who are not members of the union, but only if more than half the faculty are fully dues-paying members. This is a fair and reasonable provision, since the moral justification for collecting fair share dues from everyone rests on the will of a democratic majority having committed themselves to the union.

This is the same provision, however, that was condemned by the union during negotiations as a “Scott Walker proposal” that was “anti-union, plain and simple.” Similarly, when we raised questions about possible fair share dues on this campus, the two of us were condemned by CFA members not only as “anti-union,” but as “right-to-work” shills in the service of the Koch Brothers. It is somewhat gratifying, therefore, to see that this particular “anti-union” provision was endorsed by 98% of the voting membership of the UIC union.

Finally, the contract outlines a grievance procedure that is no stronger in its protections for tenure-track faculty than the current provisions already in the Statutes, with the exception that it puts the final level of review in the hands of an outside arbitrator, not in the faculty or administrators of the campus. We leave it to you to judge whether that is a superior system.

The silence of local faculty union advocates on all these provisions is deafening.

The achievements of faculty and administrators working together on this campus to improve the compensation and working conditions for faculty have been produced without a union, without charging faculty dues, without strikes and strike threats, and without the kind of animosity evidenced by the UIC negotiations.

UPDATE: After we posted this, and after an editorial in the News Gazette, the CFA finally posted some comments on the UIC contracts. They do not address the comparative issues we raised, and they mostly focus on gains for non-tenure track faculty. But we can’t say they are “silent” any more.

***This blog is a jointly authored project by two people who believe that the campaign for tenure-track faculty unionization has damaged morale and divided our campus, and that a faculty union, if ever established, would erode academic quality and undermine our highly successful system of campus shared governance, which has earned nationwide praise. 

We speak for ourselves. We have no organization behind us, we don’t ask for funding, we don’t pay national hired guns to come in and make the case for us. 

We want to start a different campus conversation about faculty unionization, which we believe will be more thoughtful and substantive when people have all the facts. 

We welcome and will consider postings from others expressing issues and concerns about faculty unionization. We know that many faculty are very upset about the possibility of working on a unionized campus. 

If you see any information here that is inaccurate, please tell us and we will correct it. 

If you share our concerns and want to help, please forward these postings to your friends and colleagues, and urge them to do the same.***