The Union and the Professors
Hausknecht, Murray
IN DECEMBER 1968, shortly after the last strike of New York's United Federation of Teachers ended, its sister union, the United Federation of College Teachers, entered a collective...
...This is no accident, since Kugler and the activists are "Old Left" in temperament and outlook, and see themselves continuing in the colleges the work begun long ago in the needle trades, in auto and steel...
...community colleges are springing up like crabgrass all over the academic landscape...
...The UFCT thereby suffered from the negative aura of the UFT...
...Whatever the answer is, it will have to go beyond the simplistic notion that improvements in salaries and working conditions, as important as these are, automatically mean an improvement in education...
...The very idea of a university legitimatizes professional autonomy and control over significant decisions by the faculty, and at colleges like those of the City University mechanisms permitting such control do exist...
...Setting admission policy is, in theory, a faculty prerogative in the University...
...The lecturers were predisposed to be sympathetic to the UFCT, if only because it was the one organization that paid any attention to them...
...and some evidence of "scholarly productivity" has a relatively good chance to move elsewhere or, at least, delude himself that "once the book is finished" he will be able to do so...
...The UFCT president, Israel Kugler, himself a community college professor, is uniquely fitted to understand his colleagues' problems...
...Of the 3,263 lecturers who voted, 1,634 or about 70 per cent favored the union...
...The younger people are not alone in their dissatisfaction...
...However, only 15 per cent of the tenured faculty chose the third alternative of no collective bargaining agent, and the UFCT's showing was far better than most observers had expected...
...That is, a union is simply one more organization designed to rob them of their autonomy and, since professional autonomy is central to the selfimage of the college professor, the stereotype of the union is particularly threatening...
...Their marginal status is reinforced by the status of their students...
...But to win the election the union had to make inroads into the faculties at the fouryear colleges, and here they have been less successful...
...But it is not completely different: All universities have their "fluid bottoms...
...With only his teaching skills to offer (and who cares about that alone today...
...They are far from being convinced that a union is necessary, but they are convinced that the University must be improved...
...They tend to be invisible to the tenured faculty and the Legislative Conference alike...
...All promotion systems are shot through with irrationality, but the level rises when "teaching ability" is the sole criterion...
...Still, changes in the University are eroding faculty resistance...
...In the absence of collective bargaining, though, the University has not provided some fringe benefits won by the UFT for its constituency...
...That is, the more marginal the status of the college teacher the more likely he is to vote for a union...
...The proposal had been debated within the union for years, with only the community college teachers favoring it...
...Yet one ought not to overlook the significant fact that of the 4,097 tenured faculty who voted in the run-off election, 1,774 or 46 per cent cast ballots for the UFT...
...IN DECEMBER 1968, shortly after the last strike of New York's United Federation of Teachers ended, its sister union, the United Federation of College Teachers, entered a collective bargaining election at the City University of New York...
...In New York this has meant recruiting people who are already familiar with the idea of unionization, and for whom membership does not conflict with preconceived notions of "professionalism...
...They staff the colleges' large evening sessions, and without them the day sessions would be in serious trouble...
...Moreover, the community college teacher has no access to the other "reward structure"—recognition of his professional peers...
...But there is a more critical source of discontent: The growth of the University has led to a feeling that important decisions are slipping out of the faculty's hands...
...A by-product of all this is that the annual academic trauma of promotion results in keener disappointments and sharper resentments...
...and in the run-off election it captured the votes of twothirds of the community college teachers...
...The attraction of this conservative position was enhanced when the UFCT publicized one of its pet ideas: Once an individual reached the top salary level of his rank (annual increments within rank are automatic at the University) he would be promoted automatically, if not promoted before then, into the next higher rank...
...Those benefiting minimally from the increase in salaries are the lecturers, the non-tenured and largely part-time staff drawn mainly from the graduate-student population of the city...
...in New York, as elsewhere, those whose grades do not earn them admission to the senior colleges attend the community colleges...
...The teachers there are also relatively less mobile...
...In 1946 there were four municipal colleges in the city...
...Thus, as the number of students increased, straining already scarce resources, there seemed no way to affect decisions that allowed the number of students to exceed available resources...
...Where the surrounding environment is liberal and the institution is publicly supported, as in New York, it will be easier to organize the professoriate...
...The idea conflicts with the professorial selfimage, and it was attacked during the campaign as "expressing the Civil Service mentality of the public school teacher...
...most universities, especially public ones, operate with too few resources to meet the needs of their students and faculties...
...New York is not the United States"—well, yes and no...
...They are the marginal men of the academic world who are viewed by the professoriate as nothing more COMMENTS AND OPINIONS than, at best, superior high-school teachers lacking proper professional credentials...
...regardless of how one felt about the issues in the strikes, after listen COMMENTS AND OPINIONS ing to Albert Shanker it was difficult to see the UFT as a union of serious professional people...
...and everywhere people feel they are losing control over their environments...
...Traditional union thought cannot provide an answer to the question of what role a union can play under conditions like these...
...For most community college teachers, a badly exploited group, the traditional orientations can result in significant gains...
...However, in the other colleges only a little over a third of the professors voted for the union...
...College professors have a keen ignorance of unions and share middle-class prejudices— "union" equals "Jimmy Hoffa...
...The UFT has a perverse genius for presenting itself in the worst possible light...
...The "productive scholar" gains some psychic rewards, perhaps, when his work is published and more important, he can use this recognition as leverage in negotiating for salary increases and promotion...
...The UFCT's opponent was the Legislative Conference, an old organization of faculty members that in the past had functioned primarily as a lobby...
...But at this level we are likely to see only pseudo-unions like the Legislative Conference, until some fundamental problems are resolved...
...But the community college teacher cannot escape awareness of his invidious status...
...The lecturers' salaries are absurdly low, and their status is indicated by a former president who referred to them as "the fluid bottom...
...The UFCT has always come on strong...
...collective bargaining is seen by many as an instrument for translating theory into practice...
...It may often be difficult to discern, but college professors are interested in educating the young, and they will be easier to organize when they can be persuaded that unionization could be a progressive force in improving higher education...
...Faculty ranks are equated by tradition with supervisory levels in the public school system...
...the community college teacher must make it at his own college...
...If the University had not been split into two units, the UFCT would now be the bargaining agent for the entire University...
...At the same time, the idea of a union also tends to reinforce the sense of loss of control...
...It is not so much that the University administration has usurped power but that the scale and nature of the system make it difficult for faculty to cope with problems...
...and when the UFT organized the high school teachers, the college professors enjoyed one of the most profitable free rides in the history of unionism...
...Still, a college is not a factory, professors are not "workers," and administrators and trustees not "bosses...
...It seems clear that college unions are inevitable, and they will arrive first at public community colleges...
...In turn, the union was predisposed to attend to them by something more than simply the dictates of organizing strategy...
...For this election, the University had been split into two units by the supervising state agency: one made up of part-time faculty, the other of tenured teachers...
...An effective union, in other words, can be a means through which a faculty gains or regains a sense of control of its environment...
...Their faculties have all the usual notions about the incompatibility of unionization and professionalism, and the good salaries and relatively secure status dulls the edge of discontent...
...The mind boggles at the thought of a UFCT at the University of Texas...
...The AAUP believes that unions and collective bargaining are "unprofessional" and a threat to the principle of faculty governance...
...In short, a vote for the Conference would not commit one to a radical or unconventional course of action...
...Unions like the UFCT now have the perspectives of business unionism...
...The election results demonstrated that both the Chancellor and the AAUP badly misconceived the temper and general level of discontent...
...Unfortunately, the election at the City University was held in the wake of the UFT strikes, which did nothing to allay fears...
...its tone, if not its actual words, are reminiscent of the radical organizers of the twenties and thirties attacking "the bosses...
...About a week before the election, Chancellor Albert Bowker fell victim to bad staff work and issued a brochure echoing the line of the American Association of University Professors —the faculties should choose the third option of no bargaining agent...
...The Legislative Conference emphasized that it was not a union (which it was not), and suggested there was something sinister about the UFCT's affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers...
...His social and psychological situation bears some resemblance to that of the industrial worker, and it is one that the UFCT leadership has no trouble in understanding...
...And, indeed, the community colleges have reached into the high schools for their staffs...
...The growth of the UFCT coincided with the rapid expansion of the University, and it gained its greatest support in the community colleges which were expanding at a faster rate than the rest of the University...
...Since it shares many characteristics with other pub licly-supported institutions, the results have more than local significance...
...One cannot immediately extrapolate from the City University to all others...
...Like other public universities, the City University exists in a state of chronic financial crisis...
...Consequently, physical facilities have not kept step with enrollment: classrooms, lecture halls, laboratories, library space, office space, clerical assistance for the faculty—all are in short supply...
...Commitments to teaching and research are frustrated by large classes, inadequate facilities, lack of money, and often irrational administrative behavior...
...Since the Conference does not define itself as a union, except in a purely formal sense, it would seem that professors are still far from ready for unionization...
...It did nothing to abolish fears that the union's policies would be dominated by the interests and perspectives of the community college teachers...
...Since then these four have grown to seven, plus a college of police science, a two-year upper-level college, six community colleges (with a seventh scheduled to open in September), a medical school affiliate, a social work school, and a graduate center...
...THE UFCT's MAIN TACTIC in the pre-election campaign was to articulate discontents and to stress its own militancy as an advocate of faculty interests...
...they are merely more vocal and impatient...
...This determined "anti-Establishment" posture appeals to the younger faculty members who are influenced by the politics of the sixties...
...The one exception is salaries, which are among the best in the nation...
...The UFCT won easily in the first unit, but it was only after a run-off election that it lost to the Conference in the other unit...
...today anyone with a Ph.D...
Vol. 16 • March 1969 • No. 2
