Contracts Protect Salary/Benefits

OU's Union Contracts Suggest the Benefits of Collective Bargaining (Athens NEWS)

This letter to the editor was written by Kenneth Brown, Professor Chemistry. It's short and sweet, so I've reproduced it in it's entirety. Your comments are welcome. (Based on recent comments, I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who have yet to make a decision about unionization. Do you find Brown's letter persuasive? What information would help you make a decision?)

To the Editor:

Last week at a budget forum, OU Vice President William Decatur informed the university community that while most university employees, including faculty, will see a $1 million to $5 million reduction in health-care benefits and get no raise, those in the AFSCME and FOP unions will get a 3.5 percent raise and suffer no change in their health-care benefits. That's because they have a contract with the university, and the rest of us do not. Now our "friends" who call themselves the Committee for an Independent Faculty have been trying to scare faculty out of unionizing by calculating the bazillions of dollars that would be paid as union dues over the next few millennia. But the truth is that if we had a contract with the university, we'd probably be getting a 3.5 percent raise (or thereabouts) next year and no cuts to our health-care benefits. So even after paying union dues of about 0.75 percent of salary, faculty would still be better off to the tune of about 2.75 percent, and their dues would be covered forever. Which option would you choose? A 2.75 percent raise with your union dues covered in perpetuity and no loss of benefits, or no raise and at least a $1 million cut in benefits? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Unionization Leads to Success

Collective Bargaining Allows Peer Institutions to Succeed (The Post)

This letter to the editor was written by Tracy Leinbaugh, Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling and Higher Education. It was in response to the Committee for an Independent Faculty's message that I blogged about below (2/21/09). The CIF discussed the relationship between unionization and institutional quality, and they noted that unionized institutions tend to be ranked lower than non-unionized institutions. According to Leinbaugh, the CIF failed to share some important information.

For example, Dr. Leinbaugh reminded us that three of our aspirational peer institutions and many respected universities enjoy the benefits and protections of collective bargaining [e.g., University of Connecticut (OU peer institution), University of Delaware (OU peer institution), University of New Hampshire (OU peer institution), Rutgers University, University of Rhode Island, University of Vermont, New York Institute of Technology, Bard College, City University of New York (23 CUNY campuses), State University of New York (64 SUNY campuses), New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rider University, University of California (5 campuses: Berkeley-San Francisco, Davis, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz), San Francisco Art Institute, and California State University (23 campuses)].

Dr. Leinbaugh also informed readers that our peer institutions with collective bargaining outperform Ohio University on numerous measures of quality, including freshman retention, student/faculty ratio, graduation rate, and U.S. News & World Report rankings.

And here's another great point that Dr. Leinbaugh made...Many universities (including nearly all the rest of our aspirational peer institutions) are located in states that PROHIBIT faculty from collective bargaining, and thus it is impossible to know which institutions would opt for collective bargaining if they were legally able to do so.

In closing, Dr. Leinbaugh stated that collective bargaining does not tarnish or devalue an institution. The CIF knows this, as does the OU administration. That's why they selected three aspirational peers that enjoy the benefits and protections of collective bargaining.

Will Unionization Reduce Quality?

Many faculty have received an email from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (CIF) that discusses the relationship between unionization and institutional quality (as measured by the U.S. News and World Reports annual rankings). Excerpts from that message are below. My comments follow, and your comments are welcome.

Hello _____:

This message is from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (OUCIF). We represent a grass-roots effort; a group of concerned faculty dedicated to maintaining shared governance, quality, and faculty independence at Ohio University.

What is the relationship between institutional quality and presence of a faculty union? Consider the latest annual U.S. News & World Report 2009 edition of America's Best Colleges. Correlating these rankings with faculty unionization produces the following results for various groupings of “National Universities”, as defined by the Carnegie Foundation’s 2006 Basic Classifications. A negative correlation score indicates that unionized schools tend to have lower ranking than non-unionized schools within the group. A perfect correlation score of -1.00 indicates that no unionized school is ranked higher than any non-unionized school in that category.

The message then displays two tables, each demonstrating that unionized institutions tend to be ranked lower that non-unionized institutions. You can view the tables at http://www.oufacultyindependence.blogspot.com/.

To their credit, the CIF acknowledges that correlation does not prove causation. After all, it would be a stretch to claim that unionization leads to reduced institutional quality. Instead, their primary point seems to be that "perceptions matter" and that unionization would lump us together with unsavory, low-quality schools. It's interesting that the Provost made this same point back in October when addressing Faculty Senate. She stated that "faculty unions are most popular at certain types of institutions" and that "an institution is judged in part by the company that it keeps." However, the Provost and the CIF keep forgetting that three of our "aspirational peer institutions" (University of Connecticut, University of Delaware, and University of New Hampshire) are unionized. If unionization is so troublesome, why were these three universities selected as a relative standard for our own future success?

Unionization will not reduce the quality of this great university. Under a collective bargaining agreement, we will still be the same teachers and scholars we've always been. Although our daily routine on campus will change very little, we will enjoy the security of a stable, transparent contract and the benefits we've negotiated. We'll no longer need to worry about the administration unilaterally attacking health care benefits and policies set forth in the Faculty Handbook, because our negotiated agreement will be backed by state law.

Remember, faculty have no reason to mistrust the AAUP. Since 1915, the AAUP's primary mission has been to advance academic freedom and shared governance. Ohio University has had a local chapter since 1935. Even our Faculty Handbook (Section I-A) pays homage to the incredibly influential 1940 Statement of Principles of the American Association of University Professors. These principles, which virtually all faculty embrace, are at the core of what it means to be a faculty member in a democratic society.

Concerns Go Beyond Salary

AAUP's Faculty Employment Concerns Go Beyond Salary (The Post)

This letter to the editor was written by Judith Yaross Lee, Professor of Communication Studies. It was in response to an email from the Committee for an Independent Faculty. (I blogged about the email on 2/12/09.) The CIF stated that the cost of unionization isn't worth it (dues are estimated to be .75% of one's salary). According to Judith Yaross Lee, the CIF misrepresented the AAUP's position.

A recent e-mail from the Ohio U Committee for an Independent Faculty (OUCIF) misrepresented the positions of our local AAUP chapter and facts about academic unions. I'd like briefly to clarify both for the benefit of the Athens community.

First, OUCIF implies that the OU-AAUP campaign for collective bargaining is primarily about salaries, when in fact it is about ALL of the conditions of faculty employment, especially shared governance. A chief goal of OU-AAUP is to incorporate the provisions of the Faculty Handbook into a legally enforceable contract, both to ensure administrative compliance as a matter of principle and to maintain the rights and responsibilities of faculty in academic planning and oversight. Our concerns about faculty salaries arise in the context of overall university priorities; we note that faculty raise pools take a back seat to many other non-academic matters because the faculty voice in setting strategic priorities has been muted in recent years.

Second, OUCIF suggests that faculty get nothing of benefit from the payment of union dues, when in fact dues pay for legal assistance in collective bargaining (the university has its own attorney). In any event, projected AAUP dues are far less than anyone's annual raise, as negotiated through collective bargaining - less than 1 percent, typically about half that. One of my colleagues estimates that everyone's dues would be paid forever if collective bargaining improves our salary pool over the administrative offer by just 0.25 percent annually for the first three years.

Finally, the agency fee in lieu of dues reflects the reality that ALL faculty in the bargaining unit, even if they choose not to join the union, get the benefits of the contract. They are therefore asked to pay a roughly equivalent amount to that portion of dues dedicated to bargaining. Different unions and states have different policies about how agency fees are handled. I don't know the practice for agency fees in Ohio, but when I was at CUNY, this money went into a scholarship fund for students rather than to the union.

CIF Discusses Cost of Unionization

Many faculty have received an email from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (CIF) that discusses the costs of unionization. The text of that message is below.

Any potential benefits of a union need to be weighed against the actual costs to faculty members. Faculty members who join AAUP would pay approximately .75% of their salary in union dues per year. At this dues rate, and assuming an annual raise of 3% (the average annual salary increase at OU over the past 6 years), a faculty member earning the average salary of $74,590 would pay the following dues:

Year 1 $559
Over 10 Years $6,414
Over 20 Years $15,033
Over 30 Years $26,616

Even faculty members who decline to join the union would incur a cost by paying an agency fee, which can be as high as the union dues. This financial cost represents just one cost of unionization. We don't think it’s worth it.

It's true that unionization will bring union dues, but the CIF isn't telling the complete story. For example, according to AAUP-OU, "On average, chapter members pay roughly 0.75%. But membership is voluntary. As a non-member, you might pay 0.55% of your salary as a 'fair share,' as at Akron, or nothing, as elsewhere." In other words, the faculty will decide whether non-members will pay a fair share or not, and if so, how much.

And wouldn't there be costs if we decided NOT to unionize? For example, it's likely that OU faculty will receive no raises, or raises that amount to chump-change, particularly after our health care costs are increased. But unionized campuses will enjoy the raises and the benefits they negotiated previously. For them, there will be no surprises, because their compensation will be treated by their administration as a fixed cost, which is backed by state law. Because our compensation is not backed by a legally binding agreement, it is constantly vulnerable to attack, as we all know too well (e.g., our health benefits are being attacked as I type). The bottom line is that we have little control over our own fate. That's just one indignity we suffer without collective bargaining.

I'd love to hear your opinions about this issue. Please consider posting an anonymous comment. No login is required.

Faculty Should Take Responsibility

Time to Move Past Era of Trusting in Administrative Benevolence (Athens NEWS)

This letter to the editor was written by Marsha Dutton, Professor of English. It's worth reading if you're interested in knowing why some faculty are considering unionization. In fact, it would be helpful if more faculty spoke out, if only to share with others why they do or do not support collective bargaining.

Dutton wrote about her early days teaching at OU, when the administration decided her salary and benefits, and she had no reason to distrust those decisions. Like most faculty, she was busy with teaching, research, and service, but through the wisdom of hindsight, she now believes it is somewhat irresponsible for faculty to trust that the administration will treat them appropriately. According to Dutton, "It is time for us to stop relying on paternalism and to start speaking on our own behalf. It is time for us to create a bargaining unit with a contract and faculty handbook that the university cannot violate....It is simply too dangerous to rely on others instead of taking personal responsibility."

Laws Wouldn't Affect Faculty Union

Union Discussions Should Stick to Reality and Facts (Athens NEWS)

This letter to the editor was written by Kevin Mattson, Professor of History. It was in response to Lee Ervin's letter to the editor that I blogged about below (2/2/09). Ervin stated that if the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) becomes law, it would be possible to enact union representation via a card drive and that a union vote would not be necessary. According to Mattson, Ervin is misinformed about this issue.

According to Mattson, the EFCA would apply to the private sector, not a state institution like OU. Mattson also reminded readers that the local chapter of AAUP and the OU administration are both on record stating that they desire/require an election, regardless of how many union cards are filed. Furthermore, Mattson reminded readers that contract negotiations would not begin at "level zero," as several fear mongers have suggested. State laws require that parties "bargain in good faith," and in this case that means an institution cannot punish a union by stripping its members of existing salaries, benefits, etc. (This basic issue keeps coming up. If any readers are expert in this area, please consider submitting a blog entry via email. I'd be happy to post a brief primer.)

Ervin trashed the idea of unionization in his letter, and he suggested that union representatives are more interested in collecting dues than in helping the university. As you might expect, Mattson found that insulting (and untrue, of course), so he set the record straight.

Will New Laws Affect Unionization?

New Laws Could Change Playing Field of Faculty Union (Athens NEWS)

In this letter to the editor, Lee Ervin, a former OU student now living in SC, stated that political support for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is growing and the legislation is likely to pass in the U.S. House and Senate. According to Ervin, EFCA would make it possible to enact union representation simply by presenting an employer with signed authorization cards from a majority of the employees.

This issue is relevant to Ohio University because the Committee for an Independent Faculty (CIF) and the AAUP-OU have been debating whether "signing a card is in fact a vote for unionization" (for more background information, see blog entries from 1/20, 1/26, etc.). As it is now, I believe that reasonable people who have followed this discussion understand that Ohio University will not unionize without an election. But according to Ervin, federal laws may change, and that might change matters locally.

Ervin went on to trash the idea of unionization, suggesting that faculty may need to begin contract negotiations from scratch, giving up every right and benefit we now enjoy (hasn't this argument been discredited already?). He also suggested that union representatives are not necessarily interested in what is best for the university, but are indeed interested in collecting union dues. Seems like a very cynical point of view. Is there data to back it up? Are our local union organizers money grubbers interested only in exploiting the faculty and bringing the university to its knees?

I'd love to hear your opinions about these issues. Please consider posting an anonymous comment. No login is required.

AAUP-OU Responds to CIF

The following message, written by Kevin Uhalde (President of AAUP-OU), is in response to the CIF's message that I blogged about below.

What was it that Mark Twain said about statistics?

OUCIF, already well known for spreading cheer and collegiality at OU, has more good news in its most recent circular: for 12 years you've enjoyed 1.2% bigger raises than your unionized colleagues at other Ohio universities (see the link below if you haven't yet received the good news). Try not to gloat!

Of course you probably aren't gloating, even if 1.2% impresses you more than it does me. That 1.2% isn't an advantage you're likely to have noticed, because it's the difference between two averages that themselves derive from cumulative raise percentages, not the kind of figures you use to plan a household budget.

Still, let's look at the data the OUCIF is using. Try it this way: if you're a full professor at OU, your cumulative raises over the past 12 years rank 9th out of the state (behind OSU, Miami, Bowling Green Toledo, Wright State, Akron, Cleveland, and Kent). If you're an associate professor at OU, 10 other universities in Ohio have given your peers more or higher raises. Cumulative raises for assistant profs rank 9th.

9th place, 11th place, and 9th place. Remind me why the data doesn't support unionization?

Oh, Group 2s and 4s. If you're not tenured or tenure-track faculty and want to know how your raises stack up, sorry. Since OU pretends many such faculty aren't really full time, it's not surprising there's no comparable data. And you also may have never received a raise. But it's worth noticing that unionized schools that do have data show cumulative raise percentages from 37.5% to 57%. Tell me again what's the downside?

OUCIF says OU-AAUP now is not only "misleading" faculty but making "errors" to boot. Akron and Wright State, they say, clearly shouldn't be included in salary studies of unionized schools because they weren't unionized the entire 12-year period. Uh, okay. Akron's raises had flatlined before its faculty unionized. As soon as a union looked like a possibility, the administration showered them with a mid-year raise, followed by a $1,000,000 market adjustment pool. Their first contract was for a 19.4% raise pool over four years. Wright State will get 5% next year and 5% the year after that. By the way, what's our raise pool for next year looking like?

Given the heavy representation of business and marketing faculty in the OUCIF, I shouldn't question its salary analysis. I'm a medieval historian, after all. But why remove OSU as a statistical outlier among non-unionized schools, yet include Shawnee State? Shawnee isn't even represented by the AAUP. Ah, but it pulls the unionized raise average down much further than OSU pulls the other group up.

I prefer one-to-one comparisons to see how we've been treated compared to our peers (9th place, 11th place, 9th place). And that's where I find that I'm in 11th place at a university that is supposed to be part of the "Ohio Ivy." If the averages are more important to you, that's fine. In the end, salary data can be sliced any which way to show what a person wants to show. But 12 years ago is also when our Board of Trustees vowed to move OU faculty pay into the top quartile of Ohio: it still hasn't happened.

OUCIF has offered to correct the "errors" we've made. I'd thank its members and then respectfully ask that they stop fretting over the AAUP long enough to do some work of their own, and then offer faculty a positive plan for improving OU and our place in it that doesn't involve collective bargaining.

(Oh, Mark Twain might have been the person to come up with the three types of lies, of which statistics are the third, but I'm not sure about that. Feel free to correct my error.)

Kevin Uhalde

CIF Challenges AAUP Salary Data

Many faculty have received an email from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (CIF) that challenges a salary analysis conducted previously by AAUP. The text of that message is below. Comments, of course, are welcome.


Hello _____:

This message is from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (OUCIF). We represent a grass-roots effort; a group of concerned faculty dedicated to maintaining shared governance, quality, and faculty independence at Ohio University.

Some faculty are unhappy and frustrated with the current administration and are turning to unionization as a last resort. Clearly, AAUP would like salary data to favor unionization as well.

An analysis of AAUP’s own salary data does not support unionization on economic grounds. Indeed, the analysis shows that over 12 years non-unionized faculty in Ohio received on average 45.5% in cumulative salary increases, while unionized faculty received 40.0% in cumulative salary increases.

The non-unionized public universities in Ohio are a well-respected group comprised of OSU, OU, Miami, and Bowling Green. The AAUP FAQ states that after eliminating OSU as an outlier, the data favor unionization. But that is NOT true. Even removing OSU, one still comes out ahead WITHOUT a union: 41.2% vs. 40.0% in cumulative salary increases.

Where did the AAUP data go wrong? They made two errors. First, they misclassified Shawnee State as a non-unionized school. In fact Shawnee State has been unionized with the NEA since 1989. Second, they included Wright State and Akron in the study, but those schools unionized during the 12-year study period! The error is particularly serious with regard to Akron, which unionized in 2005. For nine of the 12 years studied Akron was a non-union school and yet AAUP tries to count all 12 years as unionized! We have corrected this error by removing Wright State and Akron from the analysis.

You can access the table at oufacultyindependence.blogspot.com, or by opening the attached PDF file.

The AAUP FAQ's conclusion is inaccurate and misleading. Keep in mind that on top of the lower salary increases one would also have to pay union dues (or agency fees) at an estimated 0.75% of salary per faculty member per year (on average $559/year)—whether or not you join the union!

While it is obviously true that salary is not the only issue, nonetheless faculty voting on unionization have a right to know the truth about salaries and the fees due to a union.