California Says Yes to Unions

By Ellie McGrath

A state faculty, 20,000 strong, decides to organize

The campaign went on for months, complete with professional organizers, phone banks, rallies, mountains of leaflets and handouts, plus a blizzard of ballots. Recalls San Jose State Basketball Coach Bill Berry: "For weeks, when you saw people all they said was, 'Did you vote? Did you vote?' "

At stake was the question of whether some 20,000 faculty members of California's huge, 19-campus state university system would accept union representation, and if so, which union. The principal alternatives were the more traditional Congress of Faculty Associations (C.F.A.) and the more militant United Professors of California (U.P.C.). When the faculty ballots were counted last week, the unions were virtually tied and headed for a runoff. But in a resounding 80% return, the Cal State faculty voted to become the largest faculty ever to unionize in the U.S.

Cal State was fertile ground for organizing. Unlike the prestigious University of California system, an academic powerhouse of nine branches, including Berkeley and U.C.L.A., Cal State evolved as a collection of teacher colleges in such cities as San Jose, Chico and Fresno. Partly because it emphasizes teaching instead of research, Cal State has been treated as a second-class organization. Money and a slight inferiority complex have not been its only problems. At a time when job security is poor and tenure is an impossible dream to many young academics all over the country, 38% of the

Cal State faculty are hired on a part-time or year-to-year basis. Cal State has also been shaken by the same troubles as public institutions elsewhere. The state legislature provides starvation rations while the Federal Government has cut back aid.

Nearly as serious as economic deprivation is the disaffection that afflicts many faculties. Cal State campuses are governed by off-campus bureaucrats who seem to care little for faculty opinions. When Cal State sought a successor for Chancellor Glenn Dumke and formed a search committee, not a single faculty member was named to it. Sacramento State University History Professor Kenneth Owens, 48, even blames far-off administrators for the deterioration in classroom conditions. Says he: "The system has been so altered from anything resembling a collegial atmosphere that trade unions are the best way left to gain some influence over university affairs."

The Cal State vote mirrored divisions that already exist within the faculty. The C.F.A., linked to a nationwide teachers' union, the National Education Association, was supported by senior professors concerned with matters of scholarship and academic freedom. The U.P.C., an affiliate of Albert Shanker's hard-nosed American Federation of Teachers, counted much of its support among the part-time and nontenured. Such academic havenots, whose ranks have multiplied with the growth of community colleges, have been the backbone of the faculty labor movement, a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1970, just before budgets tightened, tenure openings disappeared and salaries fell behind the cost of living, there were 160 union campuses in the country. By the end of the decade, even though only half the states allow state employees, including faculty at public universities, to bargain collectively, there were 750 unionized campuses. The vast majority were public institutions. Some private college faculties had been organized too. But in 1980 a Supreme Court decision on faculty unionization at Yeshiva University in New York City discouraged further efforts. The court held that Yeshiva professors are not employees but managers shaping school policy and thus not protected by federal labor law. As a result, administrators at many other private colleges do not feel compelled to bargain.

Especially in big state and city systems, a strong case can be made for unionization. Unions lobby for tenure and higher pay, and often bring standardized personnel policies and fairer grievance practices. In 1980 at the State University of New York, the union representing 17,000 academics and staff on 32 campuses helped restore $22.6 million of a threatened $28 million budget cut--and 2,000 jobs.

But there are dangers in faculty unions at the university level. A frequent result of union presence is the protection of the mediocre along with the talented. Furthermore, union presence often creates an adversary situation between faculty and administration. Says Cal State's Dumke: "Under collective bargaining, working together as a community of scholars is just not possible." San Francisco State Biology Professor Lawrence Swan notes, "I see my job as teaching and research and scholarship. I try to shy away from politics."

Still, Swan voted for the C.F.A. because he believes conditions had made unionization inevitable.

At top-level institutions, where faculty has power over tenure and academic standards, unions have held almost no appeal. There is also, both inside and outside academia, a good deal of ambiguity about whether professors should organize or go on strike. Says Swan: "There's nothing lower than a faculty member who refuses to teach."

Although the voting at Cal State will boost the number of the 150,000 unionized faculty members in the U.S. by about 13%, the outlook for growth is not promising. Labor unions in general are in trouble, and higher education now seeks ways to give more classroom instruction for less money. A year ago, when the union question was fought out in the University of Minnesota system, two small campuses in Duluth and Waseca, where the faculty wanted a voice on promotion and tenure, voted to join.

But later, at the flagship campus in Minneapolis, unionization was easily defeated. This spring the 2,900 faculty members at Michigan State University will have to decide whether or not to be represented.

The campus rejected unions in 1972 and 1978, but cost-cutting during the past year has eliminated more than 200 faculty jobs. Says the Michigan Education Association's Arthur Rice: "Economics will certainly be a strong factor, but there's a hopelessness that the faculty feels." Whether in union there is hope will be in question.

-- By Ellie McGrath. Reported by William R. Doerner/San Francisco

With reporting by William R. Doerner

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