Bill would grant bargaining rights

Retention, fairness among arguments for UW System unionization option

By: Nick Halter

Posted: 12/3/07

To unionize or not to unionize.

That is the choice UW System faculty and staff would have under a new piece of legislation.

A bill that will be announced in the state Senate this month by State Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, would allow faculty and academic staff on UW campuses to collectively bargain if they so choose.

The American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin said UW faculty and staff are being denied a right most Big Ten university systems and Wisconsin private and public employees have.

The reasons for collective bargaining rights, AFT representatives said, is that the UW System has a worsening retention rate among faculty, which weakens universities across the state. As is, they said, faculty look for jobs outside Wisconsin universities to find better compensation.

"The retention rate has become so bad … How can the System keep the best and brightest here without collective bargaining?" Scott Spector, government relations representative for AFT said in a meeting with The Spectator.

The collective bargaining bill would also help students, AFT-Wisconsin representatives said.

"If faculty and academic staff can have a seat at the table … there are so many different issues we could be advocating on the behalf of students," said Bryan Kennedy, president of AFT-Wisconsin and assistant professor at UW-Milwaukee.

One concern is that if faculty chooses to unionize, professors will spend more time on strike and bargaining for higher compensation than in classrooms. Kennedy disagreed, saying the bill would forbid strikes.

He said the current policy actually hurts students because professors are leaving the UW System for higher paying jobs elsewhere, even at the last minute sometimes, leaving students without instructors and delaying their graduation.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, is opposed to collective bargaining rights. He said there are no unionized top-flight universities in the country and questioned why professors would ever want to leave their university in favor of one that is unionized.

He said the bill would give professors unnecessary benefits, such as promises of teaching assistants.

"I understand the professors probably want more teaching assistants to do their work," he said. "But that's not what the students should want and that's not what the taxpayers should want.

"(Collective bargaining) will raise the cost and lower the quality of education," he said.

UW-Eau Claire Student Senate President Ray French said Student Senate hasn't voted on collective bargaining issues since he has been at Eau Claire because it is mainly a faculty and staff issue.

"We would support anything that will keep quality faculty at our university," he said.

Kennedy said in other states where collective bargaining is available, tuition increases were no different percentage-wise than in systems without bargaining rights.

A similar version of the bill was omitted in the eleventh hour from the state budget in October. The main opposition for the proposal came from the Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization, a lobbying group that represents UW System non-teaching academic staff.

The earlier proposal was unfair because it would separate faculty from academic staff when time came to bargain, ASPRO president Bill Steffenhagen said.

Academic staff would receive less from the Board of Regents because the board is more sympathetic to professors than non-teaching staff, he said.

"Basically, the ASPRO organization has always felt it was in the best interest of academic staff to be coupled with faculty when negotiating for compensation," said Connie Russell, ASPRO member and associate registrar at UW-Eau Claire.

The new bill, however, would allow faculty and staff the right to collectively bargain together, if they so choose.

State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, is chair of the Senate's Committee on Agriculture and Higher Education that will hear the bill. Vinehout said she is in favor of the collective bargaining rights.

She said collective bargaining does benefit academic staff, and works to increase resources to universities, especially smaller ones such as Eau Claire.

"The people most likely to take the opportunity to collectively bargain are the people who feel they haven't been treated fairly in the past in regard to (the) Wisconsin Legislature," she said.

Kennedy agreed, using the academic staff at UW-Madison as an example, saying the employees there have become "unpaid slave laborers" who would benefit from collective bargaining.

AFT-Wisconsin is touring the state in hopes of educating legislators and residents on collective bargaining rights. According to an ATF press release, 14 of 15 UW-System faculty senates approved resolutions requesting the legislature allow collective bargaining rights to faculty and staff. Eau Claire is one of the 14 who approved a resolution.

Rick Richmond, manager of Learning Spaces at LTS and a member of ATF, said collective bargaining rights are long overdue.

"As an academic staff member, I'm offended ASPRO continues to deny me the right to choose (to bargain)," he said.

"What we're saying is, 'we're adults,'" Kennedy said. "'Stop treating us like kids.'"