Shaun Richman

Union Busting 102 at Pace University: Professors as Temps

The National Labor Relations Board's terrible Kentucky River decisions, which this week greatly expanded the definition of "supervisors," has handed the bosses a powerful new union busting tool. The implications for these decisions go far beyond hospitals and nurses and may eventually deny the right to form a union to all professional employees (perhaps a quarter of the entire workforce in a few short years, according to the NLRB).

The union rights of employees in higher education have been under assault for much longer. Back in 1980, the Supreme Court denied the right to organize to most college professors, ruling that if they sat on advisory and recommendatory committees, and had a say in recruitment, policies and curriculum, then they were de facto management. The decision put an abrupt halt to a modest wave of faculty organizing in the crazy, radical 70's. Prior to this week's NLRB decision, many faculty who once might have been considered management were ripe for organizing, with a new crop of CEO-style college presidents (like Pace University's half-million dollar man, David Caputo, who, rest assured, is the villain of this post as well) imposing a corporate structure on colleges and ramming their policies down the throats of politically weakened faculty (Unfortunately, it would be hard to find any full-time professor who does not exercise "independent judgement" or "responsibly direct" someone, if only the department secretary).

The Academy is a strange medieval institution that has somehow survived into the early 21st century. It's funny, then, that college CEOs have, as Labor Notes' Kim Moody has noted, turned to an equally old system to supplant it: the shape up. Colleges and universities have increasingly replaced full-time tenured faculty with adjunct professors, part-timers who make a fraction of the salary and benefits of full-timers and enjoy none of the free speech and job protections of tenure. Adjuncts account for a third of all faculty at four year institutions and as much as two thirds of the faculty at two year institutions.

Since nobody could argue (with a straight face, at least) that adjuncts have any real power or authority, they have retained the legal right to organize unions, and many have done so. In the New York area alone, the adjuncts at NYU, New School, Marymount among many others have organized in recent years. In 2004, adjuncts at Pace University (who make up a staggering 62% of the faculty) voted to form a union with the American Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers. Pace's union busting advisors initially used some of the legal delay tactics that were eventually deployed against their bus drivers. The cutest bit of their cretinous creativity was arguing that the National Labor Relations Act (which, after all, governs relations between "Employees", their "Unions" and "Employers") did not apply to them because NYSUT, a state federation of local unions, was not a "Union", itself, and that since the adjuncts' petition was filed in between semesters when they are not teaching and not collecting a paycheck that they were not really "Employees" of the University, which was not, therefore, an "Employer" (which begs the question, what the hell are they doing to fill all that real estate down there at 1 Pace Plaza?).

In the face of their adjuncts' rebellion, Pace decided to delay at the bargaining table, where dozens of negotiating sessions over the last two years have resulted in no real agreements on job security, compensation for office hours with students or pay increases that begin to approach parity with full-timers. Their goal is to frustrate and discourage the adjuncts, hoping they will abandon their union. "They are certainly not in any rush to come to an agreement," says John Pawlowski, an adjunct professor of Biology who serves as president of the adjuncts' union. "The University is resistant to its staff organizing, like any other employer," says Pawlowski. Once upon a time, the university would have been better than "any other employer," but, as Pawlowski notes, these days "most of [Pace's] Board of Trustees come from the business world."

Just like a corporate board, Pace's trustees recently formed a presidential compensation committee that concluded that the university simply must receive a huge pay increase in order to stay competitive with executive compensation across academia. When asked exactly whether the members of Pace's executive compensation experts had any experience in academia, Board member Anneilo Bianco cooly responded, "No, we're all business people."

Pace's CEO, David Caputo, who "reluctantly" accepted a $100,000 raise has been pushing "merit" increases of less than 2.5% for the adjuncts. Since adjuncts don't sit on committees, or even spend much time on campus outside of their lectures, their "merit" can only be determined by one thing: student evaluation forms. This makes perfect corporate sense if you view students and their parents as customers, degrees as product and teachers as temporary part-time workers. Just like McDonalds polls its customers, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the friendliness of your server?," Pace asks how clearly your professor explained material. Surely there's no connection between a student's anticipated grade and the rating they give their professor, and, certainly, such a salary policy won't exacerbate the very real problem of grade inflation. Then again, maybe high grades are the sign of a successful business and happy customers?

That's why the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace, the AFT, NYSUT and our friends in the labor movement will counter Pace's self-congratulatory centennial celebrations this Friday, October 6th at 2:00 pm to demand that the university finally negotiate in good faith with its employees. What's at stake is not merely what kind of education Pace will provide in its next hundred years, but the quality of higher education in general.

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Posted at 6:42 AM, Oct 06, 2006 in Labor
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