Realizing the potential of unionization to defend professional standards, more than seventy AAUP chapters serve as collective bargaining agents on their campuses. Since 1985, the Association’s Collective Bargaining Congress (CBC) has served as an umbrella organization for these chapters, providing them with information, resources, and training in academic organizing, collective bargaining negotiations, grievance handling, and arbitration.
The capstone of the training programs is the annual Summer Institute, which brings together faculty from chapters and state conferences. Faculty experts and national AAUP staff conduct workshops on topics including negotiations, leadership training, communications, and legislative affairs.
The national AAUP supports the right of faculty, graduate employees, and all academic professionals to bargain collectively if they so choose. In 1973, the AAUP adopted the Statement on Collective Bargaining, recognizing that collective bargaining is consistent with the AAUP’s defense of such important standards as academic freedom, shared governance, and due process. The AAUP’s approach to collective bargaining is unique in its focus on faculty and other academic professionals, its commitment to protecting academic freedom and shared governance, and its emphasis on grassroots organizing and local autonomy.
The AAUP engages in a wide range of activities in support of collective bargaining rights in higher education, from filing amicus briefs to committing civil disobedience.
Read more about academic collective bargaining. Contact the national AAUP staff with a question about collective bargaining.