Some of these union comment threads are nasty. On the other hand there’s plenty of good information and interesting opinions too, even if some people just want to vent. In any case I am hardly one to talk, and I am not a censor and I will continue to post pretty much every comment sent in. I would appreciate fewer flames and less trolling that seems mostly aimed at provoking angry responses.
It would also be helpful if frequent commentators would adopt some sort of screen name – The Dog is a good example of this – so the threads are easier to follow. Note that if you use the name/URL option when you comment you can type in whatever screen name you want.
If i understand the union response to the HT poll results right, the discrepancy is explained away if virtually all of the nonrespondents were pro union, people whho saw no reason to express their opinion in the HT poll. as an empirical issue, this explanation is either true or not. either way, I am deeply troubled. If true, it means that all but a small number of the union supporters were unwilling to participate in a poll that could clarify the profile of union support among TTF. The union interpretation of why it may be true is that union supporters saw any poll run by two past senate presidents, long-time and prominent faculty advocates as doing the union effort no good? Really? what does that say about union supporters? dead duck is sticking its head under a wing for a while until it is safe for logic and sense are safe to come out again.
Here’s an explanation:
Due to the same reason that UO Matters posted under this heading, many felt “why bother?” Also, and more to the point: the Hurwit, Tublitz poll was not confidential, and people resented that it portrayed itself as official with H and T signing off as former senate presidents.
Second, the claim from the pro-union posting runs like this: according to the law, the union card check counted those who did not sign as a no vote, a yes vote meant that one needed to participate actively by signing a card–therefore, if the same criteria were applied to the poll, then those who did not participate would be counted as favoring the union, or in other words, saying no to the poll. So the empirical issue falls down like this–the ERB counts the yes votes by virtue of the entire bargaining unit, non-participation counts as a no, there are no abstentions. The Hurwit/Tublitz poll was not confidential (H’s and many other’s complaint about the card check) and therefore many choose to vote no by not participating, the very same option chosen by those who did not want to support the union. Of course this is all just a response to postings doubting the honesty of the union card count because it does not favor their own view. The claim that there is no neutral body counting and that Hurwit and Tublitz are neutral is simply insulting. The ERB is not pro union, it merely regulates and administers a process–it is a legal governmental agency–why would it be biased and people who have already expressed anti-union sentiments not. I am as usual, perplexed.
There is no “union” interpretation; it is just basic survey methodology. Had their poll been subject to professional and scientific standards from the get go, they would have sought an independent body to evaluate the results rather than pose a sensitive question to many employees, some of whom likely know the stance of the two “officials” (Tublitz and Hurwit) requesting this info. Given this alone, the results would bias in favor of anti-union positions and away from union supporters, especially union supporters who are not tenured or know the anti-union motives behind the T-H query.
Why would I participate, and therefore legitimize, a poll that, by it’s very structure, will produce only more questionable results? It won’t answer anything. I participated in a process I thought was fair and made my voice heard that way. I don’t question my colleagues or the organizers integrity when they say they have a majority in each category.
I admit some questions need to be answered and data revealed. But this poll won’t clarify anything and to suggest that union supporters need to further legitimize the union votes by participating in a haphazardly designed poll is, well, silly. To also suggest that union supporters have something to hide if they don’t participate in this poll ignores the many other legitimate reasons not to participate – reasons that have nothing to do with the authors.
Talk about logic and sense – you have drawn a conclusion from a small sample on a biased forum and ascribed that conclusion to the “union”.
What is it about the Hurwit-Tublitz poll that “by it’s (sic) very structure, will produce only more questionable results?” The wording of the poll was entirely neutral and it was sent to all tenure-track faculty. I saw nothing about the poll that suggested it had been “haphazardly designed.” Instead I found it to be quite straight forward. Instead of resorting to name-calling with reference to the poll, wouldn’t it make more sense to try to get to the root of the discrepancy between the poll and the union claim to have garnered support from >50% of the TTF?
In response to “Puppy”, who says “I don’t question my colleagues or the organizers integrity when they say they have a majority in each category.” My goodness! I certainly question this. I want to see the evidence. I certainly question this.
Fair enough – you are certainly entitled to your skepticism. I just don’t share it. But, Puppies are naive sometimes.
It was sent by two ANTI-UNION, senior faculty on campus. Respondent anonymity was promised, but survey administrators on survey monkey can access email and response data. We had junior faculty afraid to sign a card in their department for fear for of responses by faculty like Hurwit. So yes, their poll was problematic because they failed to disclose their intent and their role in the process, they presented themselves as objective and neutral (even official?), when many TRF’s know otherwise. I can count dozens of colleagues who are pro union and refused to participate.
One of the sad things about this whole business is the extent to which it has set faculty members against one another. We’ve gone from a united faculty in the aftermath of the Lariviere firing to a deeply divided faculty in just a couple of months — so divided that people assume that longstanding campus leaders like Tublitz and Hurwit had some nefarious agenda in trying to ascertain the will of the faculty. The intent of the poll was clear: to determine the level of support among the TRF for a union with various compositions. Hurwit’s position on the issue was presumably relatively widely known because of his participation in the campus forum a few weeks ago, but I’ve talked to several people who either did not know Tublitz’s position or assumed he was pro-union. It’s a sad day when we assume that former Senate presidents would subvert the results of a neutrally framed poll — or when we’re too afraid to find out what TRFs really think about different union configurations to respond to a poll.
Well said.
in my post above, the motives of TH were public, though not disclosed in their request to participate in the poll. this is problematic from a scientific standpoint. But Anon 4:20 says its sad that I, or others would infer such intent, and contribute to the cultural malaise here. If TH really were innocent in their intent and wanted to know the faculty will, the poll should have been designed better so as not to play on the vulnerabilities and politics of the union campaign. This is not about being afraid to find something out, it is about trusting (in this case, undisclosed) motives that seem counter to the stated intent or form of the survey.
As was pointed out above, the survey was not neutral, no matter the intent. An assumption of questionable intent is not necessary to question methodology, on either side.
On the point of assuming nefarious intent, I agree the way this has divided faculty is sad. Case in point, the ease with which many on this forum assume nefarious intent of all the respected faculty who worked to get the union approved.
I have no more reason to believe the union claims than I do the claims of the Hurwit-Tublitz poll. It’s hard to square the two sets of results. Is it true that the law school faculty and science faculty with postdocs were excluded from the card check list? Then they might readily get a majority of TTF — exclude two of the most anti-union groups, lobby the rest, get the result you want. Is this what happened?
The union claim is now being evaluated by an independent body, protecting the anonymity of the respondents. Do you think the faculty organizing united academics just made up numbers knowing that the whole thing would be reviewed in a few weeks?
Thanks for the way you approach this blog, with your decision to pretty much not censor comments. You are being transparent in the same way you wish UO would be.
I object to having my pay docked 1-2% for something I did not vote for; to some apparently national organization. I make little enough as it is, and don’t trust this union to make a difference in that.
I agree that it is sad that at this point the faculty are at odds with each other. But I don’t know that it could be otherwise, in the short run. Oregonians don’t know how to disagree, so when they do, it just goes over the top and becomes needlessly personal.
I might be one of a few with perspective from both sides. I’m a union supporter, and a member of the organizing committee. Throughout the union effort, I have been impressed with the honesty, integrity and inclusiveness of everyone involved, both faculty on the committee and union staff. I haven’t seen any thugs arriving from New Jersey, nor have I seen any attempts at “skullduggery”.
I’ve also been involved in university governance for over a decade, good friends with Nathan Tublitz for years, and have worked and talked issues over with Jeff Hurwit many times in the last decade. I may disagree with them on campus issues from time to time, but I have never had any reason to question their integrity (equanimity, that’s another matter). My default position is always to trust what each of them says.
Because of my experience, I truly believe in the good faith of those on both sides, but I can understand how those without the same experience might have their suspicions. Each side has done things that the other side suspects: the UAUO chose to propose a broadly inclusive bargaining unit, chose to go with the (legal and wholly democratic) card check process, which is confidential but not secret within the organization, and isn’t immediately releasing the breakdown of the card check vote. The opposition is basing its doubts on a poll that isn’t scientifically valid, wasn’t technically confidential, and then immediately after reporting the results, its author was whisked away to a villa in the Tuscan countryside, where he is reportedly under the protection of Don Tommasino. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
From my perspective, those who are assuming some fundamental dishonesty and scurrilous intent on the other side are just wrong. It is an obviously contentious situation, good people have staked out strong positions, and some pointed arguments are unavoidable. But it would help a lot if everyone could take a deep breath and think about whether it is likely that many of their colleagues are complete sociopaths and liars. I mean, this is the University of Oregon, people, not Goldman Sachs.
Maybe we could all try to ramp down the mania, stop accusing people of dishonesty when we don’t have any evidence, and realize this isn’t the end of the world. Remember the diversity plan? Everyone seemed convinced that if their side didn’t prevail, the jig was up at the UO. So, has irreparable harm been done to the university in the past five years? We seem to have survived that, we will survive this, and we will all have to keep talking to each other, no matter what. So let’s not burn too many bridges.
Maybe Dog and I should even go have a beer.
Well-said, Prof Keyes, and thank you. This (anti-union) Cat never suggested nefarious actions on the part of union organizers and doubts neither their fundamental integrity nor the integrity of Hurwit, Tublitz, and others who oppose the union. Cat wishes others had not made it personal, or sprouted consipracy theories.
But Cat is about to become a member of a union, like it or not, that purports to represent her intresests. And thus Cat wants, and feels it not at all unreasonable to expect, some answers: the voting breakdown, the law school exemption, and a rationale for why no union organizer ever put the bargaining unit up for a poll, a vote, or even public discussion before moving forward with the card check.
And if Prof. Keyes and his fellow union organizers have a plan for when and how they will answer these questions at a later date, perhaps they could apprise us of it. While the TTF faculty may be riven by this outcome, the union needs to go forward representing all of us. It seems to me incumbent upon them–even MORE encumbent upon them than their opponents–to address the concerns of all faculty, those who turned in cards and those who did not. That they have so far not done so, and treated the uprush of fury among anti-union TTF with cool condescension is not, frankly, the best strategy for going forward.
Agreed. Encouraging that Prof Keyes came here to comment but very discouraging that he didn’t actually address any of the substantive points that have been raised.
I think I have addressed them as well as I can at this point on some of the other threads, and will heed UO Matters admonition to not keep repeating the same content. And thanks to you and Professor Cat for raising substantive questions thoughtfully. I hope we will be able to address more of them soon.
Dog comments
This is a blog; people are uncivil and rant in blogs; that is the nature of most blogs. I seriously doubt there will be any public manifestations of the occasional ranting outrage here, and in my experience, this blog is mostly greatly toned down from the nuclear sized flame wars typical in other blogs (try reading some on Peak Oil).
However, universities must do better than to just operate in survival mode. I will go back to what I have said in a few threads in
this forum. The culture of the UO changed a lot, circa 1997, when everything got
strongly decentralized. That lead to resource protection and a generally non
cooperate/non collaborative institution. That causes collegiality to break down and polarization to build up. The Union issue is just one more brick in that pile.
To Peter Keyes: Oregonians are somehow less mature than citizens of other states?
It’s not that Oregonians are less mature, it’s that we don’t know how to argue productively, to use argument to discern the truth. There are two modes in Oregonian discourse: passive-aggressive, or nuclear option. In the first, no open discord is allowed. Eugene is the world capital of passive-aggression.
In his book How to Talk American, Jim Crotty observes “When there is an argument, a true Portlander knows when to back off. Which is pretty much immediately. You do not win points by relentlessly attacking your opponent. MAKE NICE! is the prevailing mantra.”
So Oregonians always try to avoid conflict. But when a conflict erupts and can’t simply be wished away, we have no experience dealing with it, no clear set of protocols to be followed in an argument. Everyone just goes nuts, especially when they are Anonymous. Whereas New Yorkers argue all the time, argument is the normal form of communication. So when an argument becomes serious, it is a question of degree, not kind. ( Cf. Napoleon Chagnon’s study of the Yanomamo, where the introduction of a weapon that had no place in the traditional hierarchy, an axe, is introduced into a fight, and all hell breaks loose because they have no established way of dealing with it. I always knew those Anthropology courses would come in handy.)
This was one problem President Lariviere had here. He laid out an argument for the future of the university, and no one responded. He expected a counter-proposal, some kind of discussion, and he got silence. All the Oregonians were in denial that he said the things he just said, they thought it was bad form for him to have brought these inconvenient facts to everyone’s attention, and they just quietly waited for him to go away.
I know that people tend to rant on blogs, but I don’t bother reading them. Why read something by someone you wouldn’t bother talking to? I just expect that here the conversation would be more elevated that at the Oregonian. Which it generally is, with notable exceptions.
Dog
Yeah well we make better beer out here …
Dog – Or so Oregonians like to think. What we do know how to do here is add enough hops to beer to disguise its inherent poor quality. Which is why all the beer here is (1) an ale, and (2) extra-hoppy. (I guess we also need to get rid of all the hops grown in these parts). An Oregonian couldn’t brew a decent lager if his life depended upon it.
I concur with Dog on the superiority of Oregon beer, and would extend that distinction to our wine and distilled spirits too. At the same time, I lament with Anon 6:56 our current hop hegemony. I am hoping that a faculty union could have an impact on this problem, establishing a union hall / faculty club, where good proletarian lagers such as Rolling Rock and Iron City could be served, along with a good selection of single malts.