What does the UAW Want With America's Professorate?

by Andrew Williams
YOU’VE FINALLY DECIDED to take action. The class cancellations
and last minute re-hirings, low wages, second class status
are no longer tolerable. But rather than leaving a profession
you love, you decide to improve the job you already have.
Before you know it, you’ve called some colleagues whom you
suspect feel the same way, and as you get together for a meeting
you realize you’ve formed an organizing committee. Now, your
committee faces a series of choices. What specific changes
should you demand? Which issues are most important to the
most people? Where else on campus should you look for supporters?
And not least among the choices: which union–if any–should
you seek out for assistance?
Those who already know something about higher education unions
know that three organizations stand out as obvious choices:
the American Association of University Professors, the American
Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.
Each of these claims numerous union contracts in higher education
and represents tens or hundreds of thousands of academic employees.
Lately, another far less obvious union has begun showing up
in academic union organizing, the United Automobile, Aerospace,
and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW).
Since 1999, the UAW has won major organizing victories for
graduate assistants at the University of California and at
New York University. Recently, the UAW announced its involvement
in an organizing campaign with adjunct professors at New York
University. But does the hybrid combination of college instructors
and assembly line workers actually work to the benefit of
instructors? The UAW insists that it does.
“This is not a new voyage for us,” insists UAW Vice President
Elizabeth Bunn who directs the union’s Technical Office and
Professional Department.
Bunn says that the UAW has historic roots in higher education,
having represented community college and private school faculty
since the 1970s. Today, says Bunn, UAW representation in higher
education runs over thirty thousand, making the traditional
industrial union one of the higher education leaders. The
UAW also claims that it has significantly improved the lives
of academic workers.
“We’re very proud of our accomplishments in the bread and
butter issues of wages and benefits,” says Bunn, adding that
the UAW’s academic unions have also worked out good health
care plans, work-load protections, and discrimination protection.
Representatives of more traditional academic unions take
issue with the industrial giant’s foray into their territory,
so much so that the AFT has decided to compete with the UAW
for the right to represent part-time faculty at NYU. The traditional
unions disagree with the UAW on several fronts. To begin with,
they dispute the UAW’s claim that the union is a leader in
higher education, noting that even if the UAW represents several
thousand academic workers, the number is still only a fraction
of the 125,000 academics represented by AFT or the 110,000
by NEA.
The traditional academic unions also say they have a better
understanding of academic issues.
“Any good, aggressive union can get good salary increases,”
says Rachel Hendrickson, NEA’s coordinator for higher education.
“What makes the difference is the union that helps part-timers
negotiate governance and academic freedom, the core issues
of the academy that are not understood by nonacademic unions.”
Hendrickson points with pride to two of NEA’s recently negotiated
contracts for non-tenure track faculty in Chicago that codify
the role of non-tenure line faculty in governance. However,
for small groups setting out to organize, such issues may
seem irrelevant. More important may be the willingness of
a union to help out, and that’s one area where the UAW appears
to excel. Leaders of the adjunct campaign at NYU, for instance,
were quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying that they
might have chosen the AFT, but that the AFT didn’t return
their phone calls.
Why do academic workers seek out the UAW? It probably isn’t
because academic workers are weighing the merits of AFL-CIO
affiliation or a union’s willingness to negotiate over typically
non-negotiable issues like governance. As a non-tenure track
English professor at a large mid-western university put it,
“I don’t know enough to say whether I’d be more inclined to
work with the UAW versus the traditional academic unions.
I’m not proud to say it, but I’m equally ignorant about them
all.”
While a group of adjuncts may find one union (or one union’s
organizers) more appealing than another, sometimes leading
to harsh words exchanged among the unions and their supporters,
the national union representatives hold one principle in common.
As the NEA’s Hendrickson put it, “I’d like to see people pick
our union, but the point is that everybody needs a good union,
adjuncts, students, professors–everyone.”