4/7/2012: I’m no law professor, or $600 an hour union busting lawyer $600 an hour defender of faculty members’ right to negotiate individually with the administration, but it seems obvious that a key point in the formation of a UO faculty union is the definition of the term faculty. On 3/20 the UO union organizers petitioned the state ERB for a bargaining unit defined as:
“All full-time and part-time research and instructional faculty. Including tenure-track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, adjunct faculty, post-retired or emeritus faculty, library faculty and officers of research including research assistants, research associates, and postdoctoral scholars, employed by theemployer and excluding Principal Investigators with supervisory authority and faculty in the School of Law.”
And the commentator Terducken notes that:
According to Oregon Administrative Rules 115-025-0065, “Within 7 days after a public employer receives notice under OAR 115-025-0030(2) that a petition has been filed seeking certification without an election, it will submit to the Board an alphabetical list of employees in the proposed bargaining unit…” Therefore, this Excelsior list is a list provided to the ERB by the administration and is a standard step in this process.
But the Excelsior list that the UO administration provided in response to this petition includes many employees that are clearly not “faculty” in the ordinary sense of the word, but who are on the UO books as faculty. Der Alte has posted a helpful comment on this:
Current UO Constitution defines a STATUTORY FACULTY. “In this document, Statutory Faculty is defined as the body of professors consisting of the University President, tenure-related officers of instruction, career non-tenure-track officers of instruction, and officers of administration who are tenured in an academic department. Membership in the Statutory Faculty is retained during sabbatical leaves. Retired and emeriti faculty members are not members of the Statutory Faculty, whether or not they have teaching responsibilities. The University President is the President of the Statutory Faculty.”
With no disrespect, I do not think that people without an advanced degree, perhaps working in a lab or teaching PE courses in ultimate frisbee, aerobics, or yoga, count as faculty under any reasonable or customary definition of the word. Yet it seems that UO’s administration and their consulting lawyers have agreed with the union organizers that they do. They’ve also included emeriti, etc. in their list. The Rudnick letter to the ERB raises many objections, but none having to do with this basic question of what does it mean to be faculty – a question central to the union petition.
So, there is a game being played here between the administration and the union that most of us faculty do not understand and which I don’t think either side wants us to understand. But I bet some of our readers know what’s really going on. So why not tell us? It’s anonymous.
Much of this is just a result of unfortunate job classification titles. The DOJ ruled that NTTF are faculty because they fit the original charter definition of “professor”. I don’t think the original charter authors ever imagined that title would be applied to a yoga or ultimate frisbee instructor (or the 1890 equivalent). But that is what we now have. As a career NTTF teaching in a clearly academic area, I don’t like being lumped in with yoga instructors anymore than many TTF like being lumped in with NTTF.
Bureaucracies create structures and classifications that stop making sense long before there is a will or a way to change them. Then we get stuck in semantic messes like these rather than doing the hard work of figuring out what actually makes sense in the real world.
The only semantic mess is the one created by the union organizers as they define the bargaining unit. I still can’t believe it’s legal to sign cards and then have the bargaining unit change afterwards (which I’m betting will happen yet again before this is all over).
Yes, but with stakes this high why didn’t Geller exclude people who were not doing faculty jobs from the list? “He’s stupid” is one explanation, but why would the consultants sign off on it too?
I’d like to see you try and start drawing the line somewhere. You’d soon find out that it’s tougher than you think. Anyway, my take is different than yours – the UOs approach is to throw everyone the union wants in the bargaining unit and then the make it clear that the bargaining unit is unworkable. Having part time yoga instructors in the unit will help that cause.
In interpreting UAUO’s definition of the bargaining unit, I assume that the administration and its lawyers needed to be ready to defend their decisions in the face of an ERB or court challenge. It was pretty clear from UAUO’s definition that it meant something broader than Statutory Faculty. So what other definitions could it use?
I don’t know the answer. But if you look at the salary reports at ir.uoregon.edu going back prior to the unionization effort, people who teach classes at the rec center have been listed as “faculty” in the “EEO Category” field and “instructional” in the “primary activity” field. So maybe that’s how they decided where to draw the line?
April 7, 7:27 is right. The list the university administration was mandated to provide is not the list the administration would like to see in the bargaining unit; it’s the list of people called for in UAUO’s certification petition. That’s what the administration has presumably tried to compile and the irrationality of the listed group puts the administration in the strongest possible position to argue that certification of the proposed unit would be divisive and chaotic.
I don’t see anything in the certification petition requiring UO to include PE instructors as faculty. I agree it makes the proposed unit look irrational. This makes me think it was a strategic choice by the administration’s lawyers. On the other hand the inclusion of research assistants in the list was because of the union, who included them in their description of the bargaining unit. This also reduces the “shared interest” of the unit. So I’m still confused.
The UO union organizers asked for “All…….adjunct faculty”. It depends on one’s definition of “all” and ones definitition of “faculty”.
1. I can see how administration would want to make the list as large as possible to make the passing vote look smaller.
2. One has to admit the definition of the bargaining unit is so large and vague, it is not hard to justify the inclusion of part-time instructors. One could argue the union organizers did this strategicaly to maximize their dues (and by excluding law professors also maximize the odds of the union passing).
3. Both of these facts suggest to me the bargaining unit has not been well defined in terms of maximizing the benefits to the groups it aims to represent.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s up to the union, not the UO, to define the bargaining unit. If there’s an issue about defining faculty, then they can define it more precisely in their petition to the ERB (I do think the difficulty in coming up with this definition is a symptom of how bad an idea unionization is). I doubt the UO would get anywhere trying to game the Excelsior list as the union ultimately controls how the bargaining unit is defined. Now the UO did raise the issue of the definition of faculty in their objection (2) but I think that’s more of a technicality that points out the poor wording of the current bargaining unit definition (TTF and NTTF…including postdocs – as if postdocs are a subset of TTF and NTTF). Points (1) and (3) are the “biggies” to this non-lawyer who has read the rules a little bit.
awesome0 is certainly right that “the bargaining unit has not been well defined in terms of maximizing the benefits to the groups it aims to represent.” The explanation probably lies in the fact that the primary goal of the external union organizers is to organize a union at a research university, raise the million-plus dollars in dues that will bring, and use their success at the UO as a precedent that will help similar efforts at other research universities. I do no impute these motives to the faculty on campus who have led this effort, as I think their intentions were different, but now that it is becoming clear that the goal of unionization is being pursued no matter what the cost in terms of coherence of the bargaining unit or divisiveness on campus, might someone in the pro-union camp would step up and say: “no, this is not what we intended.”
Buster, what’s with the loaded “union busting lawyer” stuff? As far as I’m concerned, the union is trampling on my rights as a tenure track faculty member. First they try to put me in the same bargaining unit as my postdoctoral employees. Then they exclude me from the vote because they know I’m very unlikely to support them. Sleazy and corrupt is all it is! The union looks more and more like the stereotypical union thugs (without the Teamsters’ cement footware, it must be acknowledged.) As far as I’m concerned, the administration is fighting for my rights.
correction noted in text
Correction duly noted. I can’t tell if it’s meant sincerely or with irony, but I’ll assume the former. Still, it’s about a lot more than “the right to negotiate individually with the administration.” For starters, there’s the whole complication about my postdocs. Apart from that, shared governance is at stake — flawed as it may be, with a union, it’s gone.
In the bigger picture, it’s about the future of UO as a serious academic/research place. I know more than one department head who is very nervous about hiring good new research faculty and keeping the ones they have. I know one department head who is stepping down, in part because of the union. I know at least one academic-type (think dean or provost office type) administrator who thinks the union will make his job impossible. I can’t help but think that external donors are going to be much less eager to part with their money. And on and on ….
Sincerely. But shared governance is already gone at UO. The admin trots it out when convenient, but we have no input into important decisions. Look at Bean’s academic plan. Drafted with faculty input, then – literally – forgotten about. They ignored the enrollment target, and they spent the money that was supposed to go to new faculty hiring on their own pet projects.
Omygawd. The Faculty has recently adopted a new, potent constitution and Prexy has ratified it. Your impressions (02:20 PM), which are totally accurate, date from the Frohnmayer era. That gentleman (and his appointees) stepped all over the concept of shared governance. A new Constitution and new presidents, combined with some vigorous faculty input, can restore to the UO the fine reputation it once had. THAT chance, for which many folks worked hard, will be flushed if the Faculty is unionized.
Yours truly, Guess Who.
Richard Lariviere ratified it just before he left. JH has been working hard at weakening it ever since, and Berdahl has been helping out enthusiastically – see his attempts to disembowel the IAC.
My Dear Junger, I see it a bit differently. There certainly are JH-niks who would like to see the Constitution collapse. For the most part, they are left-overs from the DF days and may soon be gone.
re IAC: I understand that Prexy thinks IAC is acting beyond its authority. IAC can bring the issue to the Senate in the form of proposed legislation that unambiguously defines its authority. If Prexy doesn’t like it, the Constitution obliges him to try to negotiate modification of the legislation. Should mutually agreeable language not be found, the Assembly will convene and vote on whether to uphold the Senate’s legislation. If Assembly votes to uphold, Prexy either approves the legislation or vetoes it. A veto must take the form of a letter of explanation sent to all members of the Statutory Faculty.
Thus, the dispute and Prexy’s action are made very public. Too many vetoes may lead to a vote of No Confidence. That is the strongest faculty governance that Oregon Law allows, and I suspect it is a good deal stronger than you will find at most public universities. The hope is that, after a period of adaptation, this Constitution will facilitate vigorously shared governance.
A fully compliant Prexy would be great (maybe), but this Old Man has never seen one and doubts that he wants to.
On the change from union busting to “the right to negotiate individually with the administration,” the right to individually negotiate will exist with or without a union. The question is: has the morale of faculty improved over the last decade+ when attempts to negotiate individually are handled ad hoc, and often as an affront on the admins authority. The lawyers, with Frohnmayer on their team are happily rolling in the bucks to delay, divide, and weaken the faculty. WIth governance gutted, and unionization threatened, hey, let the happy, six-figure faculty and former admins relish their privilege while the general employment conditions for faculty as a whole erode. We are all employees and faculty are a subset of such at the UO.
As a UOMatter’s discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Frohnmayer approaches 1.
What about the fact that the union approached part-time aerobics and yoga instructors to sign cards?
That’s the part I don’t understand. Did the union say they thought this counts as faculty, or did the administration, or did both? The excelsior list comes from the administration – why did they put them on the list? Did the union make them? So far I haven’t heard a good explanation.
The union made them by including NTTF in the bargaining unit. I don’t understand why you’re making a big deal out of this (and calling Geller stupid which is just petty when you clearly don’t understand the process).
I heard that anyone teaching a class in winter term was eligible to sign a card. That would explain it, yes?
My understanding is that the union decided whom to solicit for cards, then gave the cards and their desired bargaining unit definition to the ERB. Then UO gave the names that they believed fit the union’s definition to the ERB.
So I still think UO could have held the line on who they believe is faculty. They must have decided not to do this on strategic grounds?
Well, yes. They had an additional 7 days after the Excelsior list was due to frame their legal objections to the definition of the bargaining unit. And strategically–in classic lawyerly form–they did not post that objection any earlier than the due date itself. That objection did not have an accompanying list of specific names, any more than the union’s petitions to the ERB did. It will be up to the union to contest the yoga instructors that bother you; UOMatters will just have to watch and see what they do, and then gripe about that.
I don’t have a personal opinion about Randy Geller but it seems to me odd that you regard him as “stupid” for thinking and acting like a lawyer–which he is and which he’s supposed to be–instead of with the same assumptions as you. For all we know, it may even, before the ERB or a labor judge, be regarded as detrimental to the university’s case if they were caught tampering with the names they were compelled to provide within 7 days (what you call “holding the line”). That would make a second strategic reason then just to “naively” provide a straight list of all those the union’s bargaining unit seems to include.
Cat’s no lawyer, but it strikes me that this is what lawyers do: give exactly what’s required and no more, precisely when it’s required and not sooner. And as soon as the union posted their ERB petition, the whole deal became lawyer’s work. We can blog all day, and perhaps we should indeed continue our discussions, but at official levels it’s going to be about the lawyers and lawyering, on both sides and among the officials, and one should be prepared to parse the paperwork that accompanies it all in lawyerly terms.
Unions are a business plain and simple and they exist for their own benefit first and foremost and justify their existence by “helping” people…a union will go as far as it needs to go in order to protect itself even if that means changing the rules along the way…how is this any/much different than “the man”?
Amen. This has always been my concern.
You are so ill informed about the history of labor strife and the role of unions in creating a middle class in this country and around the world, which you as a faculty member benefit from indirectly. The New Deal, and the expansion of higher education, were joined closely to the hip of rising wages buoyed by the labor movement – collective bargaining. When labor union density dropped in earnest, yes, with union-busting employers and their lawyers, so did the incomes of most Americans. Unions are nonprofits and provide collective benefits to their members – and beyond. Some of you sound like voices from the freakin right-wing, ahistorical think tanks. Union thugs, what!? You really want to identify with such regressive/reactionary and poorly informed perspectives on our history?
Clearly the union organizers thought part-time aerobics and yoga instructors counted if they were giving them cards, and that’s all that matters. What the UO was legally required to do was provide a list to the ERB of faculty who fell within the bargaining unit that was proposed by UAUO. So if the administration knew that cards were given to part-time aerobics and yoga instructors, they acted properly in listing those people. I think the only question is whether there aren’t more part-time folks than those on the Excelsior list. If so, they should be on the list as well, which would serve both to highlight the incoherence of the bargaining unit and to show that UAUO may not have even gotten a majority of the unit it is proposing.
Dog says
1) I also agree that undercounting has occurred
2) I still don’t see how pure research postdocs, on a term of
2-3 years, qualify as “faculty”
1) The union can challenge the list.
2) I don’t think this will matter. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning the bargaining unit definition (e.g. TTF, NTTF, and postocs)
But the union probably won’t want to challenge the list because if more part timers end up on the list, that could challenge their claim that the cards they turned in represent at least 50% + 1 of the proposed bargaining unit.
I’m very interested to see the union’s challenge as I assume they will have to justify any changes based on their own bargaining unit definition. For example it’s clear they don’t think administrators should be in the bargaining unit based on their website statements but the bargaining unit definition definitely does include some admins.
Here’s some counts:
3 Librarian
23 Visiting Fac
31 NTTF Retired
55 TT Fac Retired
492 NTTF Research
493 TT Faculty
842 NTTF Instruction
If the university already calls people faculty, why does the union need to do anything to define them as faculty? All of the NTTF Research employees I know have ‘faculty’ on their id cards.
UOMatters,
Here’s how understand the Excelsior document in the context of the “game” to which you refer. Looking at it anyone, including someone with no experience at all on our campus, can immediately deduce two things:
(1) There are two kinds of people on this list, namely TTF and NTTF.
(2) The TTF are vastly outnumbered.
These are two important, central points which the University would want the ERB to notice in making the case that the bargaining unit is not appropriate. As to your question as to who is on the list, first notice that the UA petition to the ERB did not say anything like “statutory faculty, as defined in the UO constitution.” Because they did not, they and thus anyone following up on the petition must take the “lay” definition. The Administration could have tried to challenge and steer this towards the constitution definition, but by not doing so they make the list all the more heterogeneous (the main point of your post), again supporting the case that it is not an appropriately defined bargaining unit.
But the more relevant matter is that UA’s lawyers will need to address this list and may need to challenge who is on and (primarily) who is not, which is going to prove to be a tricky exercise as pointed out by many others. For example, I am not on the list currently because I am a PI. But nowhere in my grant do I even ask for money to hire a research assistant (or associate). On the other hand, NSF allows one a fair amount of flexibility in how one spends money – you can ask for X but spend on Y if Y is among the list of standard uses for such grants. So perhaps I am a “PI with supervisory authority” – the authority to hire and supervise – even though I am not using that authority at the moment. This is quite nebulous, again supporting the case that this is not a well-defined (and thus not appropriate) bargaining unit.
Notice the refrain “supporting the case that this is not an appropriate bargaining unit.” That, UOMatters, is what you should be thinking about as you look at these documents, not looking for evidence of Geller’s lack of intelligence.
That is definitely the most compelling strategic explanation I’ve seen yet.
Randy Geller was Melinda Grier’s #2 in the GC’s office during the Bellotti fiasco. Read the DOJ report. UO Matters would be failing in due diligence were he to not ask reasonable questions about Geller’s competence. Richard Lariviere certainly had his doubts. He appointed Geller only after a long unsuccessful effort to find an outside hire to do the job.
I don’t think calling Geller stupid when UO Matters doesn’t understand the process qualifies as “ask reasonable questions”. Not to mention Geller’s what we have now so I don’t see how it’s productive to keep bringing skeletons out of the closet (a favorite pastime of the blog, apparently).