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U. of Illinois Challenges Unionization of Both Tenure-Track and Adjunct Faculty

May 19, 2011, 11:28 am

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees is asking that state’s Educational Labor Relations Board to block the faculty of the university system’s Chicago campus from forming a union representing both adjunct faculty members and those who are tenured or on the tenure track. In a motion submitted to the labor board on May 6, the university system argues that state law limits the composition of faculty unions solely to tenured and tenure-track professors. That interpretation is challenged by those leading the effort to form a union affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, who accuse the university system of being obstructionist. The dispute appears likely to come down to the semantic question of whether language in state law saying such a faculty union “shall include all tenured and tenure-track faculty” effectively means it cannot include other types.

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  • http://gehenus.myopenid.com/ Gehenus

     Ridiculous. U. of Illinois could not, can not and never will be able to exist without its professoriate regardless of tenure status. The professors, on the other hand, can so exist. The bosses have no machines. There are no scabs to pay. If we remember that and remember that the administration exists to serve the students and the teachers and NOT the other way around, then they will never have any leverage. 

  • tomupnorth

     In response to Gehenus:
     
    For the past 25 years I thought that my job as an administrator was to enable our institution to serve students and our other constituents. Thank you for clarifying who I am supposed to serve.
     
    Any thoughts on who teachers, like yourself, serve?

  • http://gehenus.myopenid.com/ Gehenus

    Ideally? We serve, teach and mentor students and we serve ‘humanity’ and our community by increasing our collective understanding of the universe. Not so Ideally? We serve, teach and mentor students.

    Mssr, who, pray tell, do you believe your ‘other constituents’ to be? 

    I have known both wonderful and woeful administrators. Fortunately, the wonderful ones have been departmental in nature always acting as colleagues. Unfortunately, the woeful ones have tended to be the presidents or chancellors, the aforementioned “administration,” who have chosen or put into the position of choosing to raise their own salaries to stratospheric heights while depressing the wages,salaries and benefits of the aforementioned wonderful class.

  • corwinamber

    All law is open to interpretation, but this language seems to suggest “all” means “at a minimum” — it is a floor, not a ceiling, and adjuncts can be included if the union so wishes. Excluding adjuncts at the same time as we increasingly exploit them is unethical.

  • http://www.nixhome.com/ J. Vincent Nix, PhD

    *gasp* allowing adjuncts to rub elbows with tenured faculty members would be akin to admitting that “race” has no biological base, and should be abolished.  what’s next?  total anarchy!  oh, my, call the riot police!

  • tapple2006

     Academic administrators are (usually) faculty as well.  The difference is that they have greater access to data and information, are required to see the university in a broader context, and have to make decisions in the gray areas where there are no right or wrong answers.  They also have to grapple with the fact that universities are businesses that must, at least, ‘break even,’ or they cannot attract and retain (and pay) faculty.  Perhaps you see administrators as evil capitalists (I’m guessing from your ‘machines’ comment that you are not a strong supporter of capitalism).  In both faculty and administration ranks there are perhaps ‘wonderful’ and ‘woeful’ performers.  And we probably agree that whether they are one or the other depends upon whether they align with our own beliefs!   

  • smcdonald999

    “U. of Illinois could not, can not and never will be able to exist without its professoriate regardless of tenure status.” 

    Boy that’s rich.  Amazing how the “professoriate” often thinks of itself as so distinct from those plain old educators.  Here’s a new flash:  students don’t care about your qualifications or titles.  They just want to learn from an engaging and supportive mentors.   PHD or high school teacher, doesn’t matter.  Just give them someone who knows how to make the material accessible and easy to comprehend.  

    Happily, with the advent of new technologies that can deliver the best content from the most engaging of minds, the age of the professorial gatekeeper is coming to a close.

  • megginson

    This is an old strand that I just encountered, but I’m adding to it since I’ve tangled with the IELRB in the past and wish all parties good luck in trying to navigate these waters. I’d also urge all parties to accept the fact that initial determinations may not be final. I once thought I had a decision that there would be a labor election (and don’t assume that it was for either certification or decertification; you might be wrong), and distributed flyers so announcing, as I was assured I could. Some days later the parties opposing my group announced publicly (!) that they had inside information that the decision would not actually go that way. When I angrily contacted the IELRB staff representative with whom I was working, that person expressed (sincerely, I believe) great surprise and dismay that the person who made the public statement could possibly have had any such inside information, but later that day the Board made precisely the announcement predicted. I didn’t try to work through them again. Things may have changed since then, but, again, I’d advise *all* parties to this to exercise extreme caution.

  • http://www.eyeofspirit.ca/ The Eye of Spirit

    Things have escalated way beyond a student strike & boycott; it is a political, inter-generational, linguistic and cultural rift between Quebec, the rest of Canada & United-States due to the stress of global economic crisis. The provincial government currently in power has lost complete authority with the poor, students and French intellectual elite and the proposed emergency legislation is the equivalent of the war measured act (i.e. one step away from martial law) that historically took place in the historic Canadian October crisis of 1970. The United-States media & the United Nations should really be reporting on these events in more detail since this really an outgrowth of the occupy movement and has started to influence other student movements or inter-generational youth movements against the current baby-boomer generation in power.

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