Statement of Michael Mauer, Esq.
Director of Organizing and Services
Yale University, September 20, 2003
I am an attorney in the national office of the American Association of University Professors, and appreciate this opportunity to address the interplay between academic freedom and union representation for graduate student employees, and the effect of graduate student unionism on the mentor-mentee relationship.
Since it was founded in 1915, the AAUP has promulgated and defended policy standards for the protection of academic freedom, tenure, due process, shared governance, and other elements central to higher education. At the outset, our organization consisted exclusively of faculty members at a handful of elite institutions. We now include in our ranks not only full-time and contingent faculty from all categories of American campuses, but graduate students as well. And as academic collective bargaining has taken hold over the past few decades some 70 AAUP local organizations have chosen to have AAUP serve as their union, rather than simply their professional organization. So our expertise in the academic community now encompasses both professional concerns and union matters.
AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure is the key policy document defining academic freedom. It has been endorsed by more than 180 professional organizations and learned societies, and, along with our other major policy statements, has been relied on in decisions by the US Supreme Court and other judicial and administrative tribunals. The 1940 Statement explicitly recognizes that not only faculty, but also graduate students who exercise teaching responsibilities are entitled to the protections of academic freedom.
As graduate student unionism has taken hold on US campuses, the AAUP has filed amicus briefs before the National Labor Relations Board in the cases arising at New York University, Brown University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. I would like to summarize the two arguments we set forth in those cases that are most relevant to the situation here: that unionization of graduate student employees is fully consistent with academic freedom, and that unionization does not harm faculty-student mentoring relationships. And I note at the outset that the decisions by the NLRB and its Administrative Law Judge in the NYU case accepted AAUP's urgings on the salient points.
I will address first the assertion that unionization of graduate assistants violates academic freedom.
The AAUP has issued policies that embrace collective bargaining by academic workers generally. And I note that the AAUP explicitly has endorsed the right of graduate students to bargain collectively. Particularly relevant to the situation at Yale is the specification in our published Statement on Graduate Students that administrations should honor a majority request for union representation.
The AAUP endorsement of academic unionism flows from our recognition that academic unions, like other labor unions, can be a tool for addressing economic issues. But we also assert a separate justification for academic bargaining, namely that it can serve as an effective instrument for protecting academic freedom. Indeed, our landmark 1973 Statement on Collective Bargaining encouraged local AAUP bargaining agents to strive to obtain explicit guarantees of academic freedom and tenure in their negotiated agreements.
Academic administrations predicted the demise of academic freedom in the 1960s and 1970s, when faculty members initially began to organize unions. Administrators at that time predicted that unions of faculty members necessarily would interfere with academic freedom. The actual experience of local AAUP chapters in faculty collective bargaining has refuted these predictions. In fact, the historical record demonstrates that faculty collective bargaining has yielded contractual protections for a variety of professional values, including individual academic freedom.
For example, many academic unions have successfully negotiated explicit guarantees of academic freedom in their negotiated agreements. Some refer to AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and quote it extensively in their collective bargaining contracts. Such provisions have tremendous value in the academy since they can make academic freedom protections legally enforceable.
Of particular note is the experience of the Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters in New Jersey. The Rutgers AAUP local organization was recognized as the statewide bargaining agent for full-time faculty in 1970. Teaching and graduate assistants were added to the bargaining unit two years later. Currently the local union covers approximately 2,500 full-time faculty members and 1,700 teaching and graduate assistants.
The collective bargaining agreement at Rutgers includes language, applicable to all unit members, that recognizes the principle of academic freedom. In the 31 years since the inclusion of TA's and GA's in that bargaining unit, no disputes of any kind have arisen either in the grievance forum or in contract negotiations over any arguable conflict between collective bargaining unit terms and conditions of employment and academic freedom protections. Nor, I will add, have any significant disputes arisen with respect to the sometimes differing economic interests of members of the two groups encompassed by the bargaining unit.
As to the argument that unionization of graduate students harms faculty-student mentoring relationships, neither legal precedent nor empirical evidence supports such a notion. Not only have the NLRB and state labor tribunals rejected such a contention, but two recent studies provide further evidence that unionization does not adversely affect the important cooperative relationships between faculty mentors and their graduate student mentees.
A 2002 study by Daniel J. Julius and Patricia J. Gumport of Stanford University found in their analysis of interview data and collective bargaining contracts that:
no conclusive evidence [suggests] that collective bargaining in and of itself is compromising the student-faculty relationship in general, or the willingness of faculty to serve in a mentoring capacity. Moreover, our data suggest that the clarification of roles and employment policies can enhance mentoring relationships.
Similarly, in a study titled "Graduate Student Employee Collective Bargaining and the Educational Relationship Between Faculty and Graduate Students," Gordon J. Hewitt surveyed a random sample of faculty members at five universities where graduate assistant unions had existed for at least four years: the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Universities of Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon. The study revealed that professors generally do not believe that their relationships with graduate students have suffered because of collective bargaining. Specifically, close to 90 percent of the survey participants asserted that bargaining had not kept them from forming close mentoring relationships with their graduate students. Perhaps even more significantly, over 90 percent indicated that collective bargaining had not inhibited their ability to advise or instruct graduate students. And 95 percent of those surveyed believed that collective bargaining had not inhibited the free exchange of ideas between faculty members and students.
In summary, no evidence shows or even suggests that graduate assistant unionization is inconsistent with the exercise of academic freedom, or that it interferes with the mentor-mentee relationship. Indeed, to the contrary, an enlightened approach to graduate student unionization can strengthen the integrity of the academy.
(posted 9/03)