Faculty unions represent a major and growing portion of the academic workforce in higher education. In turn, the purpose of this paper is to survey the history of unions and collective bargaining in higher education, recent changes that are expected to intensify the faculty unionization movement and the likely impact of future union activity on the governance of institutions of higher education.

Faculty at institutes of higher education began to unionize in the 1960s (Palmer, 1999). Also, although faculty at private institutions are prohibited from unionizing as a result of the Yeshiva ruling, since 71 percent of all faculty work at public institutions and 61 percent of the public institutions are unionized, unions are a major factor in the higher education’s workforce (Rhoades, 1993). Further, based on the recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (Leatherman, 21 January 2000), it appears the "union movement at private colleges [has awakened] after a 20-year slumber." That is, where "[t]he National Labor Relations Board has let stand a decision by a regional labor official permitting professors at Manhattan College to bargain collectively, [this decision is thought to signal] a possible shift by the board toward favoring faculty unionization at private colleges" (Leatherman, 7 July 2000).

Finally, with the further deterioration of working conditions for both tenure-track and part-time academic labor in higher education (as the major result of continued funding difficulties) as well as the increasing commercial nature of higher education (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich, 19 January 2001), academic unions are expected to be a major and growing force on college and university campuses.

Overview of the History of Unions in Higher Education

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) in 1935 formalized the view that workers had the right to organize and pursue collective bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions. More specifically, while workers had previously been granted the right to unionize and collective bargain in various court decisions, the Wagner Act specifically protected workers from discrimination or harassment when they exercised these rights. The new law was particularly significant for the union movement since employers were no longer able to discriminate against current or prospective employees on the basis of their union sympathies. In addition, the Wagner Act established the National Labor Relations Board to investigate and rule on allegations of unfair labor practices and to oversee union representation elections.

Yet, in just a little more a decade after the passage of the Wagner Act, the 4 fold increase in union membership and a rash of strikes in 1946 motivated the subsequent passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. Where the Wagner Act had prohibited unfair labor practices on the part of employers, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited unfair labor practices on the part of unions. For example, the new Act prohibited unions from coercing nonunion employees or mandating union membership as a condition of employment (known as a closed shop). However, while the closed shop became illegal, the union shop (meaning, once hired, a worker must become a member of the union) is legal unless specifically banned by state legislation. As of 1999, 21 states have banned union shops (Kaufman and Hotchkiss, 1999).

The subsequent unionization of federal workers began by executive order during President Kennedy’s administration and was further formalized in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. However, the Civil Service Reform Act limits the scope of collective bargaining and prohibits strikes. In state and local governments, public employees are allowed to collectively bargain in 39 states but only 11 states provide for the strike option in certain circumstances (Kaufman and Hotchkiss, 1999).

In higher education, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers began to work for collective bargaining for faculty members during the 1960s (Palmer, 1999). In addition, the American Association of University Professors issued its first Statement on Collective Bargaining in 1973 and now represents about 65 thousand faculty members in 62 different bargaining unit. By 1995, "[a]cademic unions now represent 246,207 professors…," utilizing 504 bargaining agents on 1,115 campuses throughout the United States" (Hurd and Foerster, Apr/May 1996). According to Rhoades (1998), "[i]n 1994, 224,221 faculty on 1,057 campuses were represented by collective bargaining agents." This amount of union activity "is about 44 percent of full-time faculty nationwide" (Rhoades, 1998). In the public sector alone, "[a]bout 63 percent of full-time faculty, and 60 percent of institutions …have faculty union contracts" (Rhoades, Ibid.). Further, "if you factor out research universities, which with a few exceptions are not unionized, the percentages [include] ...89 percent of [the] faculty [in public institutions]" (Rhoades, Ibid.).

While collective bargaining units represent a majority of public institution faculty, in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled (NLRB v. Yeshiva University) that the faculty members at Yeshiva University (and by extension, other private institution faculty members) were "managerial" and thereby excluded from the collective bargaining process (Kaplin and Lee, 1995). As a result of the Yeshiva decision, 30 faculty collective bargaining units were decertified and only 70 private sector colleges and universities were unionized as of 1995 (Palmer, 1999).

Economics of Unionization in Higher Education

While collective bargaining encompasses both wages and working conditions, from an economic standpoint, the critical question is whether faculty unions have raised the salary levels above what they would be in a nonunion institution. For 2-year institutions, Wiley (1993) reports that "faculty unionism has a positive effect on salary, fringe benefits, compensation and percent change in pay levels during the initial stages of collective bargaining, …[h]owever, that effect declines over time." Yet, this finding is contradicted by the later work of Rhoades (1998). Rhoades starts by noting "[m]ost scholars expect nonunionized faculty to be better paid, for unionization is considered a sign and/or cause of de-professionalization, and thus of lower pay, …[h]owever, the findings do not support these expectations."

Looking specifically at Rhoades’ (1998) findings, the first noteworthy disclosure is that faculty salaries are highly stratified by field. For example, in the 1993-94 academic year, while the average salary of a law professor was $89,777, the average salary for an education professor was only $56,459 (Rhoades, Ibid). Then when considering the case of faculty from different fields under collective bargaining versus non-collective bargaining, again the average salaries vary greatly by field, but in the 48 faculty fields profiled by Rhoades (Ibid.), in every case the unionized faculty had higher salaries (see table below for a selection of the faculty fields surveyed).

However, it is not just the faculty members that gain from the higher salaries. The Theory of Efficiency Wages states that firms operate more profitably if wages are above the equilibrium level. While counter intuitive to the notion of keeping costs as low as possible, it has been demonstrated time and again that higher wages markedly raise efficiency. The specific factors linked to increased productivity include how better paid workers are healthier, change jobs less frequently, provide a greater work effort and perform at a higher level. Henry Ford is credited with first demonstrating the Theory of Efficiency Wages when he started paying workers on his automobile assembly lines $5 a day. Not only was the $5 a day above the equilibrium level of wage, but about twice as much as the going wage. In turn, as the Theory of Efficiency Wages predicted, "[t]urnover fell, absenteeism fell, and productivity rose" (Mankiw, 1998). Further, "[w]orkers were so much more efficient that Ford’s production costs were lower even though wages were higher" (Ibid.).

Fast-forwarding to the present day, the early favorable labor policies of the Ford Motor Company have been maintained and continue to prove the validity of the Theory of Efficiency Wages. While General Motors has taken a hard-line against organized labor, the Ford Motor Company continues to "court" labor. Kaufman and Hotchkiss (1999) report that "[e]very other month the United Auto Workers Vice President, Ernest Lofton, and the Ford Chairman, Alexander Trotman, meet for breakfast" where according to Mr. Lofton, "[management] takes us through what they are planning for the next five or six years." The outcome of the close relationship between management and labor at Ford Motor Company is 33.3 vehicles per production worker produced in comparison to only 27.3 vehicles per production worker produced at General Motors (Ibid.)

Case Study: One Institution’s Campaign to Oppose Collective Bargaining

Oliker and Kaufman (1975) provided a fascinating and detailed view of how administrative efforts contributed to the rejection of collective bargaining at Syracuse University in the early 1970s. In total, the institution’s opposition to the unionization of faculty included the allocation of three full-time staff members and the necessary funds for 15 months of research and planning (culminating in the drafting of 5 position papers), legal fees and mailings. A summary timeline of events and the administrative strategy is detailed below.

--Summer 1972 – The chancellor refused to recognize the Syracuse University (SU) Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as a collective bargaining unit.

--Summer/Fall 1972 – The university chancellor assembled a research team that ended up spending 6 months studying the issues related to collective bargaining in a university setting. The product of the research team included the development of 5 position papers.

--Summer/Fall 1972 – Hearings were held before the regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

--Summer 1973 – NLRB rules in favor of an election to decide the issue of whether the SU AAUP would serve as the collective bargaining unit for full-time faculty. However, the NLRB granted the administration’s request for department heads to be excluded from collective bargaining on the grounds that they were supervisory.

--Fall 1973 - At a university convocation the university chancellor states that while he believes collective bargaining would be "against the university’s best interests," he would "let the faculty decide the issue" (Oliker and Kaufman, Ibid.). [The stated neutrality was intended to allow the administration "to disseminated the information gathered by its research team with out incurring charges of unfair labor practices" (Oliker and Kaufman, Ibid.).]

--Fall 1973 – The Chancellor utilizes a team of special assistants to run a campaign to present the administration’s view of collective bargaining. This team included the individuals that initially researched the subject area and included activities like "a general faculty meeting to air the issues, informational meetings for deans and directors, and the establishment of a resource bureau of speakers opposed to faculty unionization to meet with faculty groups" (Oliker and Kaufman, Ibid.). The position papers previously developed by the team posited the likely impact of collective bargaining on all aspects of higher education and were strategically mailed to each faculty member so the arrival of the material would coincide with a weekend during the 30 day period directly proceeding the voting day (on whether to unionize the institution faculty).

--Fall 1973 – Department chairmen are continually advised of the legal framework they are to operate within and are directed to urge all faculty members to vote. (The administration needed 80 percent or more of the faculty to prevail.)

--Fall 1973 – The AAUP disseminates briefing papers to faculty members but uses the campus mail.

--Fall 1973 – Late in the fall campaigns, the students weighed in on the administration’s side owing to their fear that an increased faculty voice in institution governance would diminish the student role.

--Fall 1973 – Two days prior to the election administration organizers called all faculty members to urge them to vote.

The outcome of the election included a 90 percent turnout and a 38 vote "no agent" margin (the term "no agent" signifies a rejection the collective bargaining agent). This outcome demonstrated it is possible for administrators to actively oppose unionization without incurring a charge of unfair labor practices. Also, the university administrators’ plan for opposing collective bargaining with what appeared to be "a well-run political campaign which was calculated to reach its peak on the morning of the election" was shown to be an effective strategy (Oliker and Kaufman, Ibid.). However, the costs incurred by the institution, particularly in the areas of dedicated staff and legal fees, were extensive and in the absence of the subsequent Yeshiva prohibition against unions in private institutions, there is no guarantee that the "no agent" outcome could be maintained indefinitely. In other words, even where the one time allocation of significant amount of financial resources to campaign against a faculty union is questionable, the question remains if the administration could justify the repeated allocation of funds to oppose future unionization efforts. Finally, according to Oliker and Kaufman (Ibid.), "faculty interest in collective bargaining is a clear signal that the governance process was not functioning properly" and further even at Syracuse where the unionization efforts were successfully foiled, if initiatives to address faculty dissatisfaction are "not forthcoming, there will be little likelihood of long-term improvement in the climate of the institution."

From a definition standpoint, collective bargaining entails the negotiation of wages, non-wage benefits, working conditions, and anything else related to the particulars of employment. In a higher education setting the "anything else" can include tenure, retrenchment clauses, post-tenure reviews, limitations on outside employment, union representation on promotion and tenure committees, union members serving as full-voting members of the board of trustees, use of adjunct faculty and graduate teaching assistants, requirements related to long distance teaching and more.

From a process standpoint, collective bargaining includes concessions made by each side during X number of bargaining sessions until agreement on wages and non-wage matters is reached. The figure below illustrates a hypothetical case where it took six bargaining sessions for the faculty union and institution to reach agreement on the wage rate(s).

Implicit in the bargaining process is the relative bargaining power of each side in the negotiations. That is, the bargaining power is defined to be the ability to induce concessions. For the unions the main source of bargaining power is the threat of a strike. In the case of faculty unions, since academic instruction is not a commodity that can be stockpiled, the strike threat is significant.

For the institution, the main source of bargaining power is the ability to resist a strike. In turn, although instruction cannot be sold from inventory, if just the full-time faculty were striking, presumably administrators would have some ability to cover the teaching load with the more full-time employment of part-time or temporary instructors.

Still, it is worth noting that in general and academic unions alike strikes are rarely invoked (Kaufman and Hotchkiss, 1999 and Harrison and Tabory, 1980). Also, there are numerous alternative non-strike methods of dispute resolution available including, mediation, fact-finding and arbitration (Kaufman and Hotchkiss, Ibid.). Mediation entails the use of a neutral, experienced third party to help the two sides reach agreement. Fact-finding is typically employed when mediation fails to bring about an agreement between the two sides. In turn, the fact-finding process is two fold—the factual investigation of the assertions made by each side and the positing of a set of recommendations for resolving the conflict. Finally, arbitration is considered the third level of dispute resolution and resembles mediation except in this case the determination of the neutral third party is binding.

The rise in graduate student union activity, the possible reversal of the Yeshiva prohibition on collective bargaining in private institutions, and the growing use of part-time and non-tenure tract faculty are but a few of the reasons why faculty unionization activity is expected to intensify.

In response to the increased union activity institution administrators can actively oppose unionization as the administrators at Syracuse University did or even use draconian techniques "similar to blue-collar workers: discrediting unions, speed-ups, give-backs, increased use of part-time labor" like Slaughter (1993) suggests have been employed recently. However, taking a hard line approach to potential union activity will not only further strain labor relations but misses the essential point--it is faculty discontent not unions that administrators in postsecondary institutions need to fear. Faculty discontent erodes productivity and compromises the quality of instruction and all the other essential work of higher education. Alternatively, unions can be considered to be a means for reaching and working productively with faculty members just as the Ford Motor Company does today to maintain their competitive advantage.

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