Research On The System Of Faculty Collective Bargaining In American University And College

Collective bargaining by faculties came to higher education in the United States in the latter half of the 1960s as a result of new statutes in some of the states and a reinterpretation of the federal labor relations laws by the National Labor Relations Board. Although faculty bargaining has as yet reached relatively few of the nation's four-year colleges and universities, public and private, in but a dozen states, there have been many predictions that it will spread rapidly to a significant number of institutions. Its effects on the academic profession and its potentials for strengthening or weakening the institutions and for helping or hindering teaching, research, and service are still not fully known. What is known is that the ramifications extend far beyond"wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of work"as they are understood in industrial bargaining.Although collective bargaining is new in higher education, the statutes are on the books, and the case law is accumulating from labor board hearings and rulings. In this early stage of development, it becomes essential for the members of the academic community-faculty, administrators, boards of trustees, students. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education neither condemned nor advocated the movement toward faculty bargaining. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education think that the collective bargaining has the following means:Firstly, Faculties should be granted, where they do not already have it, the general level of authority as recommended by the American Association of University Professors. Secondly, State laws, where they do not now permit it, should provide faculty members in public institutions the opportunity of obtaining collective bargaining rights.Thirdly, representation and bargaining units should be composed of faculty members, including department chairman.