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."