Shared Governance and Unions

The opponents of faculty unionization at UIUC often suggest that a faculty union here would replace our academic senate. They have to suggest this rather than asserting it directly, because most of them know that the suggestion is simply untrue. It is a phantom threat that anti-unionists are using to undermine support for unionization among those faculty (like myself) who value shared governance. The fact of the matter is that faculty unions at places like Rutgers, the University of Florida, and the University of Oregon do not replace senates. On the contrary, most campuses with a union also have a senate; the two institutions co-exist peacefully and productively, often with the same faculty members serving in both. (It is worth noting here that many of the strongest supporters of unionization at UIUC are current members of our senate, or have many years of service in the senate behind them.) Unionized campuses continue to have senates because unions and senates perform different functions. Unions negotiate legally binding contracts on matters related to the faculty’s status as university employees. Each contract is different, because the faculty at each institution determine what they wish to bargain for. Often, however, contracts contain provisions related to salary (for example, establishing pools of money specifically earmarked for merit pay, or for raising the minimum salary of non-tenure-track faculty), conditions of employment (for example, requiring that each unit clearly spell out its criteria for tenure, while still allowing each unit to set its own criteria), and a wide variety of other issues. Not the least important function of unions is that they have the legal standing to demand full budget transparency from university administrators—something that UIUC faculty are currently unable to do. Senates, on the other hand, participate in shared governance by advising their administrations on educational policy. This is an extremely important role, which is not properly the purview of unions, and which senates at many universities continue to perform very well. Unfortunately, in recent years our own UIUC senate has lost much of its traditional influence over educational policy. In fact, the anti-unionists’ loudly asserted claims that shared governance is alive and well at UIUC appear to me to be so far-fetched as to be almost delusional. The senate advised that the “Chief” be retired, and that advice was ignored--until the NCAA threatened sanctions against the university. The senate advised against Global Campus, and that advice was similarly ignored. The Chancellor introduced her Coursera initiative over the summer of 2012, and got it approved by a small coterie of supporters within the senate—directly contravening the senate’s by-laws in the process. Recently the Senate Executive Committee even began considering a proposal to prevent the senate as a whole from publicly discussing candidates for honorary degrees. This last proposal may not go forward, but it is indicative of the administration’s (and, sadly, the SEC’s) lack of interest in ordinary senators’ opinions. The creation of a faculty union at UIUC could not directly reverse the decline in shared governance here, because—as noted earlier—a faculty union does not replace a faculty senate. It is possible, however, that establishing a union might help indirectly. In the first place, faculty at some universities have managed to write their senate’s by-laws into their union contracts, making infringement of those by-laws a potential subject of legal action. Under those circumstances, the Coursera debacle of 2012 would have been much less likely to happen. More importantly, a faculty union could provide the structure for organizing faculty resistance to encroachments on the senate’s traditional prerogatives. For example, at the request of the senate, the union could organize a letter-writing campaign directed at the Board of Trustees, the legislature, or the public. In the end, however, the union and the senate will always remain distinct institutions. Thus, even if we succeed in establishing a legally recognized collective bargaining unit on this campus, the onus for reestablishing real shared governance at UIUC lies on the senate itself.