By Rudy H. Fichtenbaum
Recently I heard from Jeff
Halpern, the longtime chief negotiator for our Rider University chapter. He
inspired me to use this column to highlight events at Rider, because they show
what’s possible when faculty act collectively.
Like many institutions,
especially smaller private ones, Rider has declining enrollments. Demographic
changes are typically the cause of such declines. Most institutions react by
raising tuition discount rates.
This strategy is clearly
unsustainable. I am reminded of the story of two hikers who spot a far-off
grizzly running their way. The first hiker sits down to discard hiking boots
for running shoes. The second says, “Even with those shoes, you can’t outrun
that bear!” The first replies, “True—but I can outrun you!”
When administrators at Rider
finally realized they could not discount their way back to financial health,
they embarked on an alternative path, heeding the canonical advice not to waste
a crisis. They pursued a destructive path of “structural change.” Jeff said,
“We are in a struggle over who will be at the heart of the university. Will it
be the faculty as it has been until now? Or will it be a management that
imagines itself running just another business—a management with clear disregard
for the educational quality of the institution and obvious disdain for the
professional standing of faculty?”
As a private university, Rider
is subject to the 1980 Supreme Court decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva
University, which denies most full-time faculty members in private institutions
the right to pursue collective bargaining under the legal framework of the
National Labor Relations Act. The administration could simply refuse to
recognize the union: no federal statutes protect the right of faculty at Rider
to unionize. So how does AAUP-Rider function successfully as a union? The
chapter has about 98 percent membership, and members have shown they’ll do
whatever it takes to preserve their union, including striking.
The chapter, Jeff continued,
is committed to “the ideal of a university where real education is at the heart
of the mission. A university where the relationship between faculty and
students is recognized as the very essence of education. A university where the
pursuit and dissemination of knowledge are seen as inseparable.”
Seeing this relatively small
chapter battle so intently against such overwhelming odds is truly
inspirational. By staying together, faculty preserved their right to speak with
a collective voice.
Faculty often say, “I wish we
had a union, but I teach at a private university,” or, “I live in a
right-to-work state,” or, “My state ‘prohibits’ unions.” But what is a
union? It is only a group of employees who act collectively in order to have a
voice at work. You—everyone—can have a union, provided you and your colleagues
organize and act collectively. Remember, unions long predated enabling
legislation and state-sanctioned collective bargaining. Likewise, AAUP-Rider
lives and breathes, Yeshiva notwithstanding.
What does it take to have a
union? Faculty—you and your colleagues— must organize. You must collect “real
dues”; twenty dollars annually won’t do. Resources facilitate organizing:
conducting meetings; holding rallies and demonstrations; having a substantial
campus, online, and media presence; disseminating information; and employing
assistants to support such activities.
Any group of faculty can have
a union. Aim for 15 percent membership within the first year, then 20 percent,
and keep building. All the while, have chapter leaders speak out at every
opportunity, issue demands, and work on broadening the circle of active members
and leaders. Just building membership is not enough!
Organizing is a process.
Nobody can specify the exact membership threshold you must attain. But with the
support of a large majority of faculty willing to act together, the day will
come when you decisively influence events on your campus. That’s a union.
Faculty have immense power,
but in the absence of organizing that power is only unrealized potential.
Fruitful negotiating entails issuing demands and acting collectively to
realize that power. Of course, no group will get everything it wants. But
without organized, concerted activity, you’ll get either nothing or just what
the administration wants to give you.
The failure to exercise our
power has allowed the malignant corporatization of higher education to
metastasize. Faculty often seem reluctant to act because we worry about hurting
today’s students. But our failure to act now actually hurts generations of
students.
Frederick Douglass said it
well: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.”
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