Unionized Professors

At Philadelphia's Temple University, the 1,380-member faculty saw its position eroding rapidly. For lack of money, the administration abolished 230 part-time and 26 full-time teaching jobs, twice postponed scheduled pay raises, and repeatedly vetoed faculty-committee nominations on tenure. State legislators, moreover, seemed ready to enact a law to force professors at the state-supported institution to teach an average of twelve hours a week, compared with nine now. In self-defense, the faculty fought back last week. By 911 to 183, they voted to organize themselves into a union and negotiate a labor contract with the university.

Only a few years ago, such a vote would have been almost unthinkable. Most college academics thought of themselves as intellectuals whose interests could hardly be equated with those of organized labor--or even with such lower-level colleagues as public-school teachers. All that has changed across the country as enrollments stagnated, money became tight and jobs scarce. Explains Ellis Katz, a political scientist and a leading union organizer at Temple: "There is a growing sense of alienation and frustration here and elsewhere, a feeling that we're up against a period of anti-intellectualism where we'll need to stand united."

Switched Role. In the last few years, the faculties of 121 four-year and 147 two-year campuses--all but a handful publicly supported--have voted to organize unions. Among the most recent was the faculty of the University of Hawaii, who had been refused pay raises for two years. Similar votes may be held later this year at the universities of Massachusetts, Nebraska, Washington and Wisconsin, and at Akron, Kent State and Syracuse universities. In California, where professors rebuffed Walter Reuther's efforts to organize them in the 1960s, the 11,000 teachers at the 19 campuses of the state university and colleges seem likely to unionize within the next couple of years. Even occasional setbacks, such as last week's 1,213-to-718 vote against forming a union at Michigan State University, may be only temporary. Says M.S.U. Economist Walter Adams, who is also national president of the American Association of University Professors: "Two bad years in the legislature and some disliked administrative action--no matter how trivial--will eventually put over unionization."

The A.A.U.P. itself switched from being merely a professorial trade association to a labor organization only last spring. It did so after discovering that the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers--fresh from their decade-long fight to organize 75% of the country's public elementary and secondary-school teachers--were making rapid inroads into higher education. Now the three groups compete fiercely, sometimes on the same campus. At Temple, for example, they spent an estimated total of more than $100,000 to sway faculty votes. The N.E.A. alone sent about 25 professional organizers to the campus, where they buttonholed professors, arranged meetings and stuffed faculty mailboxes with position papers.

New Promises. What the unions promise is higher pay, job security and protection against increased teaching loads. After seven Chicago community colleges were unionized, for example, faculty compensation doubled in five years. At private Ashland College in Ohio, faculty members organized when the school cut costs by dropping 29 of its 162 teachers, and not only negotiated better job security but also a cut in the teaching load from an average of 15 to 12 hours per week. By far the most lucrative contract, however, was won in 1969 for the 16,000 teachers and other professionals of the 20-campus City University of New York, which was the first major university to engage in bargaining with its faculty.

The faculty union emerged from the negotiations with a contract which stipulated up to $31,275 a year for full professors, a raise of $5,275. This meant that even the average full professor got 20% more than his counterpart at Harvard. The union is now demanding a further pay raise of $2,700 in its next contract, as well as a cut in class size, which it claims will benefit the poorly prepared students admitted under CUNY'S open-admissions policy. This week, with contract negotiations at an impasse since September, the union planned to take a strike vote. If the strike comes off, it will be the first faculty strike at any major U.S. university.

Just how faculty unions will affect the fabric of higher education in the long run remains to be seen, for so far they have generally limited negotiations to pay, job security and work loads. Pessimists such as the University of Wisconsin's Vice President Donald Percy predict unionization will result ultimately in the end of academic autonomy for state-supported universities. He thinks that collective bargaining would enable the faculty to leapfrog the administration and negotiate directly with the state legislature. Asks Percy: "What is there to prevent the legislature from negotiating tenure or curriculum?"

Even moderate administrators agree with M.S.U. President Clifton R. Wharton Jr. that the existence of faculty unions will "drastically alter" the traditional cooperation between faculty and administration, replacing it with an "impersonal and adversary" labor-management relationship. Temple President Paul R. Anderson suggests that unionized professors should no longer be allowed to participate in the selection of new administrators. But a lot of professors, who have long felt that they have been somewhat conned by the administration's concept of them as members of one big happy family, find a new dignity in the role that the union gives them as (sometimes) friendly adversaries.

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