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The idea of college professors joining unions
was almost unheard of 10 years ago. Now they
are doing it by the thousands, although some are
reluctant to do something they consider
unprofessional.
To many, professionalism still means concern
for the advancement of a profession that is more
important than personal reward, and a shared
concern between employe and employer for a
common goal. The characteristics of
professional employment—a salary rather than
an hourly wage, moderate supervision, employe
participation in decision-making—suggest a
eentlemanly arrangement in which neither side
tries to get the better of the other. .■ *
Now that there are professors professing-*
-ometimes in gentlemanly fashion—this model
i« unrealistic
"The American university, like everything
else in America, has fallen into the hands of the
livers, or administrators,"? writes Milton Mayer,
a former newspaperman now teaching at the
Vmversitv of Massachusetts.
"Their low statutory function in the university
is to minister to the professional needs of their
profession betters, but this is not what they do.
In the private schools they answer only to the
tradesmen who constitute the board, in "the
public schools to the tradesmen who consttlite
the legislature." ' •
The feeling “I'm treated as a tradesman, so I
might as well get what I can out of it” seems to
have sparked most collective bargaining
movements in schools. and
secondary teachers were first and now more
than half the teachers throughout the country
belong to unions. Next were community and
state teachers' colleges, whose faculty members
are hired to perform specific tasks.
In line with the national model, the
Commonwealth campuses saw the first attempts
to organize faculty at Penn State. PSUBranch
was formed as a response to what some faculty
members saw as a distant and unresponsive
University bureaucracy. When the
Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled this
summer that branch faculty could not unionize
by themselves, PSUBranch brought a National
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Education Association representative to State
College to begin organizing faculty members
throughout the University.
According to PSUBranch President
Jacqueline Zemel, interest in collective
bargaining at University Park first was sparked
by dissatisfaction not with the administration
but with the state. Legislators’ asking how many
hours faculty spend working and state
Education Secretary John C. Pittenger’s
planning for an open "university without
consulting faculty are insults to many faculty
members’ professionalism, she said.
Robert Scholten, president of the local chapter
of American Association of University
Professors, recently wrote, “Increased
centralization at decision making...has tended to
produce a corporate structure in which the role
of the faculty is imperceptibly changing from
that of a partner to that of an employe.”
At about the same time as PSUBranch’s
decision this fall to organize faculty members on
all campuses, the AAUP announced it will work
toward collective bargaining and will itself seek
recognition as the bargaining agent.
A poll of AAUP local membership last spring
showed 71 per cent favored either preparation
for electing a bargaining agent or holding the
election itself. Six hundred of 800
Commonwealth Campus faculty members have
indicated an interest in giving PSUBranch a
hearing.
With support growing here, and with Temple
University, Lincoln University and the
University of Pittsburgh already electing their
bargaining agents, Penn State seems likely to
follow suit. And the bargaining agent probably
will be either the AAUP or the NEA, with its
subsidiaries, the Pennsylvania State Education
Association and PSUBranch.
At the first organizational meeting in State
College, the NEA offered its support for
organizing efforts without any condition that the
new union later affiliate. But at the meeting
several faculty' members opposed NEA
involvement and refused to participate if NEA
did.
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AAUP material stresses that each chapter is
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under local control and that AAUP seeks
“harmony and cooperation in the academic
community.”
PSUBranch officers at the organizational
meeting lauded NEA for its more activist policy,
however, and scorned what they saw as AAUP
sluggishness.
The first of many study reports from the
University Faculty Senate takes no stand on
collective bargaining, recommending instead
that each person “face this issue in the quiet of
personal reason and conscience.”
The effects of collective bargaining, when it
comes to Penn State, almost certainly will
include more concern by faculty members for
their own interests. Kenneth P. Mortimer,
associate professor of higher education here, has
written that faculty members under unioh
contract enjoy higher salaries than do faculty
members at comparable schools without
collective bargaining. Concern with
professionalism indicates faculty will demand a
greater role in University decisions and a more
structured redress of grievances.
The effects on students, depend almost
entirely, on the attitudes of those in power.
Gerald P. Phillips, a professor of speech who
volunteered to spark NEA’s organizing effort at
University Park, suggested organization would
allow faculty to protect student interests In
reality it is likely to do so only when student and
faculty interests coincide.
At the organizational meeting, Zemel
criticized the University for squeezing faculty
pay between a static state appropriation and
barely increased tuition. She implied that,
should the state fail to meet increased faculty
salaries, the increase should come out of higher
tuition.
On the other hand, collective bargaining could
mean more faculty autonomy and more
flexibility for a student working closely with an
instructor.
But it was a breakdown in gentlemanly
accomodation that resulted in the collective
bargaining movement in the first place. In times
of “every man for himself” one might wonder
whether students will consider bargaining
collectively for their own interests.
Collective
bargaining:
Many faculty members
are caught in the middle
between opposing
factions in the
growing controversy
over faculty unionization
By Andy Isaacs
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