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Sadly an article written by an intern in Crosscut fails to discuss the issues with the proposed UW faculty union. The issue deserved a LOT more insight.
The article is right about one thing. The UW pays its non contract faculty abysmal wages to provide entry level courses. Annual salaries can be as low as $20,000. These might be increased if the new $15 minimum wage applies, except that the UW low balls these faculty by offering only part time employment and pay for prep time is a lot more confusing than pay for someone selling burgers. Finally A PhD teaching French at UW is paid far below the salary of a Seattle Public Schools teacher whose salary is negotiated by the union.
Part of the debate is about the union that backed the $15 wage .. the SEIU. SEIU is spending a lot of money to represent the UW faculty. SEIU, however, is NOT the traditional American union. It is a political party that runs candidates (Kshama Sawant received hundreds of thousands of dollars from SEIU, much of it in dark money used to provide tactical support.) This matters because the income from UW faculty would be $6,000,000. Under SEIU rules, $5,000,000 goes to the national union for use at its discretion. Five million dollars is a lot of money if it can be used to elect politicians.
SEIU is also NOT the usual academic union. Other campuses have been organized either by the AAUP itself or by teachers’ unions. While these unions also have political agendas associated with education, they do not act as more general political parties. This new role for SEIU is a reaction to the Koch brothers and other far right efforts to take over our government. We all witnessed the huge fights in Wisconsin between Governor Walker and that state’s public unions. That fight goes on at the level of the other UW, the University of Wisconsin. Once ranked as a major competitor as an elite public university, the other UW is now threatened by changes in tenure policy legislated by the Koch-dominated legislature and its Governor.,
The changes in tenure policy made it legal for universities to lay off even tenured professors for so much as program “modifications,” that is rearrangement of departments or programs that make potions obsolete. The proposed tenure policy also doesn’t ensure that layoffs would have to be subject to any kind of faculty approval.
The faculty at UW’s flagship Madison campus last month approved tenure protections that ensure professors only may be laid off for educational considerations that have been vetted by faculty peers, but it’s unclear whether that policy can stand if the board approves a more limited one.
All of this argues for the need for a politically active union, like the the SEIU. Danger, however, comes from a meme is reminiscent of the sixties radicals’ as well as today’s Tea Party’s call “We are the people.” UW/SEIU postings and PR describe it as is it were the faculty. In fact, more faculty have signed on to the wbesite opposed ot the union ..UW excellence. That sites real concerns are that the SEIU/UW union would use SEIUfnding to sominate UW governance.
The problem with an SEIU/UW style union here is the faculty at the UW has many world class figures … some paid salaries of a million dollars or more reflecting the support of private donors, foundations, and research agencies. Other faculty, especially in the Schools of Medicine, Business and Engineering compete professionally with the private sector where a top physician, economist or computer engineer may earn 100s of thousands of dollars. UW salaries for these faculty, while are way below those private sector wages, are higher than the salaries earned by other faculty. These competitive faculty work of relatively low wages because they want the freedom to do independent research and work with UW students. So far, the SEIU/UW has said nothing about how ti would work ot support such elite salaries.
These faculty, an elite, matter because the UW is VERY different from the public image created by the Huskies and the presence of a large undergraduate student body. The UW is ranked amongst the top world research universities, well into the middle of the rankings of America’s elite Ivies, above all but three non-USA universities (all in the UK), and above all other American public Universities except for Berkeley. NO MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITY FACULTY IS ORGANIZED AS A UNION. (Note: the UC system is but their union represents only the adjunct and contingent faculty.) READMORE