Universities and collective bargaining

The author disagrees with Cameron's suggestion that democratization and decentralization were a mistake. As chief lobbyist of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, he argues for collective bargaining. He counters Cameron's support of the continuation of mandatory retirement with reference to the U.S. experience and points to the Supreme Court's defence of tenure.     

Provision for community college faculty development in collective bargaining agreements

While the need for community college faculty development has evolved into a top priority issue over the last decade, collective bargaining has become a significant influence on the programs and policies of two-year campuses in many states. The following study examines the trends of collective negotiations as they affect inservice education, through an examination of collective bargaining agreements. The findings indicate that few colleges declare the purpose of faculty development to be increased teaching effectiveness or link participation in professional growth activities with reward for that participation. Few colleges include faculty on inservice planning bodies. However, facilitating policies for staff development exist in significant numbers of agreements, providing for inservice days, leaves of absence, sabbaticals, tuition reimbursement for formal study, and released time for innovative program development. In all, the trend is presently one of negotiation of provisions in a piecemeal fashion rather than one with the goal of establishing comprehensive professional improvement programs.     

The growth and impact of teachers' unions in states without collective bargaining legislation

This paper examines teachers' union activity in large school districts in the eleven states without collective bargaining legislation. A supply and demand model of municipal labor markets was used to specify reduced form wage, employment, and expenditure equations. These equations were then estimated using ordinary least squares regression analysis to determine the impact of teachers' collective bargaining. The presence of a collective bargaining agreement had a statistically significant effect on wages and district expenditures. Average teachers' sa;ary in districts with collective bargaining agreement was 9.5% higher than average salary in districts without collective bargaining agreements. Similarly, average school district expenditure was 15.6% higher in districts with collective bargaining agreements.     

Why collective bargaining in higher education

Fordham University faculty members rejected collective bargaining in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supervised election in the spring of 1975. The present study was conducted prior to the election. Relationships between faculty members' attitudes toward collective action and their perceptions of the quality of the organizational characteristics of the University were examined.The study was based on modern organization theory which contends that the needs of organizational participants must be satisfied and integrated with organizational goals to maximize output and to minimize the potential for dysfunctional behavior of the participants.The findings supported theory. Faculty members were less supportive of collective action when they perceived administrator-faculty and intrafaculty relationships, motivation processes, and communication processes to be at levels conducive to meeting their needs.     

Teachers’ unions and compensation: The impact of collective bargaining on salary schedules and performance pay schemes

This study examines the impact that collective bargaining has on multiple dimensions of teacher compensation, including average and starting salaries, early and late returns to experience, returns to graduate degrees, and the incidence of different pay for performance schemes. Using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and a more recent data set, the Teacher Rules, Roles and Rights (TR3), we find that collective bargaining has a significant impact on all aspects of current, qualification-specific salary schedules. Further, we find some evidence that bargaining impacts the design of performance pay plans. Specifically, unions tend to encourage teacher bonuses that are based on additional qualifications or duties, but discourage bonuses that directly reward improved student test scores.     

A collective bargaining election: Issues and faculty voting behavior

Following the election of a faculty collective bargaining agent at the 14 Pennsylvania state colleges, the authors administered a survey questionnaire to a 50% sample of the bargaining unit. The objectives of the research were to identify relationships between faculty choice of a bargaining agent and several collective bargaining issues: attitudes about the contending associations, the extent to which internal versus external governance matters influenced voting behavior, attitudes about the scope of negotiations, attitudes about the defined bargaining unit, attitudes about faculty strikes, and demographic faculty characteristics. The authors provide primarily a narrative of the research findings and end with a succinct general summary of their findings. A brief discussion is also presented on the potential impact on elections of voters who fail to vote their conscience.     

Tenure,support of collective bargaining,and unionism in higher education: Some challenging findings

Questionnaire responses of a large educational faculty in a private university were used to examine support for collective bargaining and several propositions about unionism. The little existing research on specific schools within universities suggests that education faculties modestly support unionism, with tenure related negatively to it. Parametric and nonparametric analyses of data from this faculty revealed considerably different results, including far greater union support and tenure's positive relationship with unionism. This investigation suggests that theorizing about unionism and collective bargaining within the schools of universities, such as schools of education, needs to be reconsidered.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association in San Francisco, April 19–23, 1976.     

Conditions influencing faculty voting in collective bargaining elections

This research examines the factors that influenced voting behavior in two faculty union defeats at New York University. Faculty members' and librarians' demographic and professional characteristics referred to in previous research on collective bargaining were not good predictors of how they voted in these elections. However, their satisfaction with conditions at NYU, especially satisfaction with participation in governance, was a strong predictor of how they voted. Furthermore, faculty characteristics were found to influence their satisfaction with conditions. This paper also discusses the importance of the swing votes cast in a run-off election by the members of a previously defeated third party and the influence on the election outcomes of an independent group of faculty members opposed to unionization.     

How and why the CAUT became involved in collective bargaining

Despite a persistent belief to the contrary, most Canadian universities prior to the 1960s did not operate collegially. They were run autocratically. Collective bargaining arose as a means of ensuring true collegiality through negotiations between equals, legally entrenching due process and academic freedom, and providing a clearer and stronger mechanism for dealing with salaries and benefits. This was a revolution from below in the governance of universities. Although the sixties are widely regarded as the age of student revolt, in Canada it was the faculty, not the students, who secured a dramatic change in the power structure of the university through collective bargaining.     

The role of professionalization in a collective bargaining election

This study examined a university's faculty voting in a collective bargaining election. Not only were the votes for and against bargaining collected, but also relevant demographic data were includedon each ballot. These data permit analysis of which specific faculty members at a comprehensive university tend to favor or oppose faculty bargaining. The variable of professionalization is identified as being important to the faculty members' decision. The findings have ramifications for faculties, governing boards, and governmental labor-relations agencies in considering how bargaining units should be composed and imposed.     

Community colleges with collective bargaining agreements: Are they different?

The absence of data-based research on the collective bargaining movement is surprising given the potential significance of this issue to the academic community. The purpose of this study is to show that community colleges can be differentiated on the basis of the particular collective bargaining representative selected and, furthermore, that those affiliated with one bargaining representative are different from community colleges which are not affiliated with any bargaining representative. These institutional differences are presented and their implications for both the collective bargaining and community college movements are discussed.     

Academic penetration in faculty collective bargaining contracts in higher education

The purpose of this research was to analyze faculty collective bargaining contracts at 124 institutions of higher education that had a 10-year history of collective bargaining from 1975 to 1985 to determine if contracts negotiated in 1975 significantly differed from those negotiated in 1985 with regard to 18 selected academic items. Each academic item in both the 1975 and 1985 contracts was coded according to a scaling code with rankings showing the direction of faculty control. The findings revealed that the 1985 contracts contained both an increased number of academic items and an increased level of faculty control over most of those academic items compared with the 1975 contracts.     

Interaction of efficacy,commitment, and expectations in the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining

A model of the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining is developed which reflects recent developments in theory and research in organizational behavior. The model is an alternative to those grounded in need-satisfaction theories and takes into account interaction effects among variables. Hypotheses are formulated which explore how faculty members develop: (1) beliefs about, and effective responses toward, their work environment; and (2) propensities to wish to change that environment by implementating collective bargaining. Empirical data are analyzed to assess the main effects of, and interactions among, organizational commitment, perceived personal efficacy, and expectations with respect to the impact of bargaining.An earlier draft of this article was presented before the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Chicago, March 1978.     

Pluralist models of public sector collective bargaining: Proposals for public education

Current methods of public sector collective bargaining are modeled after private sector bilateral negotiations. Often they do not adequately reflect the pluralistic nature of the many publics affected by the results of such negotiations. In this study the authors examine the present methods of collective bargaining particularly as they relate to the public sector. The argument is made that in the public sector, particularly where public education is concerned, bilateral negotiations are not adequate nor desirable. They violate our democratic, pluralistic traditions. The legal and political issues involved in public bargaining are examined, as are current and suggested third party roles in the process. Four multilateral models for pluralist bargaining are then developed and discussed. The article concludes with a call for formalized public participation in public education collective bargaining.     

Faculty contract configurations: Probable impact

A generalized version of the academic flow model was constructed from pooled data from two institutions of higher education. This version of the model was used to analyze the probable quantitative effects — on a faculty composition, on salary costs, and on the rate of faculty turnover — that would result from the implementation of each of the following seven theoretical options: (1) implementing an early retirement plan; (2) extending the probationary period for tenure; (3) shortening the probationary period for tenure; (4) using a greater proportion of part-time faculty; (5) using a greater proportion of unlimited renewable appointments (unlimited renewable appointments are one- or two-year term contracts that may be renewed indefinitely); (6) using a greater proportion of nonrenewable fixed-term appointments (fixed-term refers to those appointments that are full time but that are not eligible for tenure; and (7) granting substantially less tenure.     

Organizational climate and faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining: A university in a major labor dispute

The present study attempts to broaden Neumann's (1979) original study, which included only universities with favorable labor relations, and to assess the role of organizational climate in predicting and explaining faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining at a college facing severe labor problems. The major findings of this study are the following. First, the perceived power structure is the dominant predictor of attitudes toward unionization at the university in a labor dispute. The magnitude of relationships between perceived power and collective bargaining attitudes is noticeably stronger at the university with unfavorable labor relations than at universities with favorable labor relations. Second, inequity is related to some aspects of collective bargaining and is not related to others. Third, perceived goals do not effect faculty attitudes toward unionization. The implications of these findings are discussed and elaborated.