Uncommon Sense
The Newsletter of the United Faculty of
(an FEA [AFT & NEA] affiliate)
The Voice of the University Professional
Volume 14, Number 1 Summer, 2006
Join the Movement ... Today
Procrastination, said Edward Young, is the thief of time. And time, said Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, is the stuff that life is made of. So when you put something off to tomorrow, or next Thursday, or sometime later, all too often what you are really doing is not doing it today, leaving tomorrow to fend for itself.
What goes for diets, time management, and personal relationships also goes for union membership. When you decide to join the union at the end of the fiscal year, or when you get tenure, or when you get that grant, the effective decision you are making is to not join the union today.
But the union needs your strength ... today.
The union represents everyone in the bargaining unit because repeatedly the bargaining unit has voted in favor of union representation. But the union is not a charity; it is an organization of your colleagues working together for all of us, in part by providing services that would be quite expensive if obtained professionally. The union needs resources for this, and the ultimate source of these resources must be the beneficiaries.
You.
Consider the main mission of the United Faculty of Florida. The union bargains and enforces the contract (the Collective Bargaining Agreement). That means that we need a Bargaining Team (led by an experienced and capable Chief Negotiator)
to bargain with the Board’s team. It means that we need a Grievance Committee (led by an experienced and capable Grievance
Chair) to assist employees who file grievances over violations of the contract. And all this means that we need a lot of members.
First of all, bargainers and grievance officers (and other union executives) are all volunteers, your colleagues, from the bargaining unit. We need lots of members simply to get enough volunteers to do the union’s business.
Secondly, the union’s clout at bargaining and in grievances arises from its membership. As the United University Professions (which represents faculty at SUNY) discovered, there is a quantum jump in what a union can do once a majority of the bargaining unit are dues-paying members.
Our membership is relatively low compared to other locals in the Florida Education Association, many of whose locals are getting higher percentage raises than we are. And that is no accident. If you want higher raises, better work conditions, and more respect for faculty, you are going to have to join.
Today.
This year, we are conducting a membership campaign, led by Sherman Dorn and Steve Permuth. They would like volunteers to help talk to colleagues about the union. If you’re a union member, we need your help; if not, we need you to join.
Come and join the movement.
Dealing with the Legislature
Man, said Aristotle, is a political animal. Certainly, Alexander the Great’s tutor would agree that academics are not above politics. A government balances the various demands on its purse, and if Academia seeks substantial appropriations, Academia must make its case. And in a democracy, the squeaky wheel often gets the grease.
A state legislator typically sees public universities collectively as one of many interests, and not necessarily a particularly awesome one. Legislators value the educational opportunities universities offer to their constituents’ children, and they value the commercial opportunities university research offers, but other interests make their cases, too.
For example, a survey conducted this summer indicates that 49 states will have larger surpluses; and 14 of those states intend to spend more on higher education. But there are backlogs of neglected infrastructure needs, depleted trust funds, and a hankering for tax cuts. Meanwhile, over the next decade, prison and health expenditures are expected to rise.
The UFF has been increasingly proactive in dealing with the Legislature. In the last two years, we have spearheaded legislative mandates for raises, and we are discussing collaboration with the administration. The public supports the universities, but we must organize that support to win resources from the Legislature.
And, alas, some legislators seek job security by manufacturing crises like ... the alleged epidemic of liberal oppression in Academia. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, especially when the Legislature is in session. The UFF has blocked some rather foolish legislation, most notoriously the Academic Bill of Rights, which would have exposed classrooms to extensive and repeated legal review. But we aren’t always successful: the ban on travel to “terrorist” nations) was introduced and passed so quickly that we had no time to organize opposition, so we are now seeking other means to deal with it.
But that only
shows the need for a more ... formidable ... presence at
The Legislature enacts laws, and a union –a creature of laws – has a stake, and repre-sents people who have a stake, in those laws. That makes the Legislature part of our beat.