From the President: Restructuring and the CBC
By Cary Nelson
In the last issue of Academe, I described how the restructuring recommended by a task force established by the AAUP Council will strengthen the organization and allow us to advocate more vigorously for our principles and members. The restructuring will transform the AAUP into a three-part enterprise—with a professional association much like the current AAUP, a charitable organization to attract contributions to support much of the professional association’s work, and a union that will be the successor to the Collective Bargaining Congress. It’s the labor union to which I want to turn my attention now.
Restructuring is not about transforming AAUP-style collective bargaining. It is about strengthening it. Restructuring offers a good deal of potential for positive change, but the collective bargaining members and chapters themselves will have to vote for many of those changes before they can go into effect. Becoming a union under the AAUP’s banner will invite comparisons between the AAUP-CBC and other national unions. That will be both an opportunity and a challenge. We are already at work to strengthen the educational, informational, and organizational resources we offer to our members. A searchable database of AAUP chapter collective bargaining contracts went online in June 2007, a particularly significant resource given the increasing importance of mirroring shared governance and academic freedom principles and regulations in a legally enforceable contract. Becoming a national union will free us up to decide whether to add collective bargaining–organizing and contract-negotiating courses to our Web site and make them available only to our members.
Union status for the CBC will allow the CBC to lobby aggressively for legislation friendly to collective bargaining. And it will allow the CBC to draw attention to those state and national legislators who support such bills. Whether or not the AAUP-CBC chooses to endorse candidates for political office—and I would strongly advise it not to do so and perhaps to restrict that authority in the AAUP-CBC constitution—a nonpartisan checklist of those who support higher education and collective bargaining initiatives could be useful to our members.
The AAUP-CBC union will be able to create a specific dedicated strike fund. A stronger and more substantial fund than our current emergency fund obviously cannot be built up overnight, but it should be a fundamental goal. In addition, the AAUP-CBC’s public statements will carry more weight coming from a traditional union structure. As a union, the AAUP-CBC will also be able to negotiate joint actions and alliances on equal footing with other unions. Organizational affiliations will be more manageable under the new structure.
Perhaps the most important opportunity, however, at least from my perspective, will be distinctly evolutionary. A national union has to be dedicated to strengthening all of its local chapters. It is inevitably concerned with its collective public image and reputation, and that requires that all of its locals be effective in representing faculty interests. As a national union, every local victory becomes collectively important. Every good contract provision—whether about salaries and benefits, academic freedom, or shared governance—is immediately a national achievement.
Many of our local chapters are already involved with helping one another; that sort of commitment will be enhanced by restructuring. A coherent national identity should make all of us dedicated to ensuring that the majority of faculty in units represented by our collective bargaining chapters are full union members. Such matters will become a collective responsibility after restructuring, when we will begin to have more reason to talk about AAUP-CBC solidarity not only at the local level, but also at the national level. If more solidarity means more members, as it should, that may make it possible to increase the amount of funds available to the CBC.
A more national orientation may also make members willing to raise money for specific benefits. For instance, AAUP-CBC membership in Education International, in which some CBC members have expressed interest, would cost each collective bargaining member roughly $1.50 per year. After restructuring, if the Executive Committee of the national union (AAUP-CBC) proposes that benefit or others, it can vote to approve or disapprove the expense. Once the restructuring occurs, the AAUP-CBC will have the authority to take charge of its future in many areas. It can raise money to hire staff with specific responsibilities. It can intervene in public issues with a voice that carries more weight and independence. We think a stronger force for higher education and AAUP-style unionization will result.
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