Collective Bargaining

About two hundred faculty members and other higher education professionals gathered at Roosevelt University in Chicago from July 26 to 29 for the AAUP’s Summer Institute, cosponsored by the AAUP’s Collective Bargaining Congress and Assembly of State Conferences. The event is geared toward both unionized and nonunionized faculty activists at all types of institutions.

In June, the AAUP submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the National Labor Relations Board on the question of whether faculty members at private colleges and universities who are seeking to be represented by a union are employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or excluded managers. In the case Point Park University v. Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and Communications Workers of America, faculty members petitioned for an election and voted in favor of representation by the Communications Workers of America, Local 38061.

During my thirty-seven-year career as a professor of English literature, I have learned as much from professional service outside my home institution as I have from my work as a teacher and scholar. Engagement with the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Association of Departments of English (ADE) has both enabled my service at my home institution and awakened me to threats that neither the MLA nor the ADE can counter. Fundamentally, however, I am a teacher. I do research so that I have something to teach.