Fra gårsdagens New York Times. Utviklinga er også på
gang her -- vi har bare ikke kommet så "langt" ennå.
Trond Andresen
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/opinion/28WILL.html
>May 28, 2001
>
>Why Professors Turn to Organized Labor
>
>By ELLEN WILLIS
>
>I am a manager, or so I'm told: as a tenured professor at a private
>university, I belong to a self-governing community of scholars. Why then
>would I imagine I need, of all things, a union?
>
>In 1980 the Supreme Court, citing the collegial structure of the medieval
>university, ruled that Yeshiva University need not recognize its faculty
>union because professors are part of management. The decision choked off
>private-sector faculty organizing for two decades. But now this era may be
>ending. As part-time faculty members (not covered by the ruling) and
>graduate teaching assistants unionize, the professoriate at private
>institutions is reassessing its situation. Recently, in a closely watched
>case, the Manhattanville College faculty union was recognized by a regional
>division of the National Labor Relations Board; the ruling is under appeal.
>
>Even in 1980, the Yeshiva decision was anachronistic. Today it's undeniable
>that universities, public or private, are modeled not on medieval guilds,
>governed by their members, but on modern corporations. Policy is made by a
>president (read chief executive) and administrative bureaucracy accountable
>not to a community of scholars but to funders and the board of trustees. The
>corporate university is obsessed with its bottom line. Faculty members are
>regarded as employees who must be pressured to increase "productivity" by
>teaching more and larger classes at less pay and financing their own
>programs with outside grant money. Students and parents are seen as
>customers to be satisfied.
>
> From the corporate viewpoint, traditional notions of shared governance and
>faculty autonomy are a nuisance that impedes administrative "flexibility."
>Tenure is particularly galling, protecting both the "unproductive" and the
>insubordinate. So university administrators are doing their best to reduce
>faculty power. The number of tenured professors is rapidly shrinking
>relative to low-paid part-time and non-tenure-track instructors — who are
>excluded from academic governance — while a large percentage of
>undergraduate teaching is done by graduate students. Faculty "authority"
>over hiring and promotion amounts to the right to make recommendations that
>are frequently overridden; professors are increasingly denied a role in
>appointing administrators. "Merit pay" has largely become "market pay,"
>based not on professors' scholarly achievements as judged by their peers but
>on the demand for their services at other institutions.
>
>Yet while the administrators of private universities — especially
>prestigious research institutions — attack the reality of faculty
>governance, they need to preserve the appearance. Their reputation depends
>on it: the idea of a community of scholars is an integral part of their
>appeal to "customers." And the rhetoric of collegiality remains their best
>defense against unions. By opposing the collegial ideal to the alien
>industrial mentality that unions supposedly inflict, they hope to keep
>full-time faculties not only from organizing themselves but from supporting
>union campaigns by graduate students and adjuncts.
>
>At New York University, where I teach, impatience with this contradiction
>has led to a resurgence of faculty activism. When the N.Y.U. administration
>launched a scorched- earth campaign against the graduate assistants' union,
>it ignored protests from the faculty. But after the N.L.R.B. certified the
>union, the administration considered refusing to bargain, on the grounds
>that it was morally bound to protect academic collegiality from intrusion by
>an outside organization. (The union is affiliated with the United Auto
>Workers.) By a large majority, professors who responded to a survey by the
>university's faculty council urged administrators to bargain, arguing that
>the real threat to collegiality lay in their indifference to student and
>faculty sentiment, not to mention the prospect of a divisive strike. The
>administration decided to deal.
>
>Recently, N.Y.U.'s board of trustees handpicked a new university president
>without benefit of a search committee that represented the N.Y.U. community,
>including the faculty. This violation of shared governance scandalized even
>conservative, anti-union professors. The Faculty of Arts and Science passed
>an official resolution condemning it. The campus chapter of the American
>Association of University Professors circulated a faculty petition. The
>board chairman's response: "We fully understand the faculty point of view,
>and we reject it." So much for professors as managers.
>
>There's an old labor movement saying: "The boss organizes the shop." It
>promises to be as true of the academy as of the factory.
Ellen Willis is a journalism professor and president of the American
Association of University Professors chapter at New York University.
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