AAUP Advances Collective Bargaining
By Cathy Jones
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that faculty at Yeshiva University were managerial employees and therefore not covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), it ended a decade of faculty union campaigns that began when the labor board first asserted jurisdiction over private nonprofit institutions of higher education. (The NLRA guarantees the right of workers in the private sector to unionize.) Since being stripped of the protections the NLRA provides, faculty at private institutions have had to rely on organization and force of argument to retain their collective bargaining representation.
Last fall, the faculty at Emerson College, a private institution in Boston, preserved its union and successfully concluded negotiations. The Emerson administration had given the faculty an ultimatum in 2003: either abandon the decades’ old union or be blocked from participating in shared governance. After a three-year battle on campus and in the community, the faculty at Emerson simultaneously ratified a new collective bargaining agreement and a faculty handbook.
In a second AAUP victory over Yeshiva this season, the faculty at the University of the Virgin Islands overcame the administration’s attempt to apply Yeshiva in the public sector when the Virgin Islands labor board rejected the university’s argument that the institution’s faculty are managers. The board ordered an election within forty-five days to permit the faculty to vote on whether to be represented by the UVI chapter of the AAUP.
In spring 2001–02, the faculty re-established a flagging AAUP chapter; within a year, a majority of the faculty had become members of the AAUP and the UVI chapter. The chapter took the lead on several important issues, most triggered by the actions of an increasingly autocratic administration and board of trustees. Ultimately, the chapter’s members decided to seek certification as the faculty collective bargaining representative.
The UVI-AAUP filed a petition with the Public Employee Relations Board of the Virgin Islands at the end of January 2004. Although representatives of the administration and the chapter agreed on the details of an election in a prehearing conference, the administration later reneged, arguing that UVI faculty were managerial employees as defined by the Yeshiva decision. The administration also claimed that even though the Virgin Islands has its own labor statute, the rationale of Yeshiva should be adopted by the local labor board, thus barring the UVI-AAUP from becoming the faculty’s certified representative.
Since the labor board rejected the administration’s argument and directed an election, leaders of the AAUP’s Collective Bargaining Congress have been helping UVI-AAUP counter a vigorous antiunion campaign by the administration. (As of this writing, the UVI faculty have voted, but the ballots have been impounded pending a ruling on the administration’s appeal of the labor board’s decision.) We look forward to reporting on the outcome of the election in a later issue of Academe.
|