Q. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) covering part-time faculty at the New School is
silent in several areas involving governance and planning, such as voting rights in general faculty meetings. Is ACT-UAW claiming
that part-timers should have rights not specified in the contract?
A. The CBA sets out faculty rights and responsibilities
in minimum terms: a floor, not a ceiling. Nothing in the contract legally restricts the ability of union members to participate
with other faculty in the regular collegial functions of their programs and schools, or in a university-wide forum such as
the Faculty Senate. The focus of the CBA is on part-time faculty members as employees of the university, while participation
in academic planning and governance pertains to our role in the larger community of scholars, artists, and teachers made up
of all faculty.
Q. Service to the university is part of the
job description of full-time faculty members, whereas part-timers are simply hired to teach their courses. Isn’t it
unfair to expect part-timers to put in extra time attending faculty meetings or sitting on curriculum committees?
A. It would certainly be unfair (and a contractual violation) to require part-time faculty
to perform extra duties without compensation. The CBA provides compensation rates for committee service and other work above
and beyond the teaching of specific courses under the heading of “Additional Duties.” Attendance at general faculty
meetings does represent an extra, uncompensated effort and therefore cannot be required, but it is something that many part-timers
gladly take on in the interests of collegial participation in the affairs of their programs and divisions.
Q. Promoting part-time faculty involvement in committees seems like a good idea, but isn’t
it too costly for a university with limited financial resources?
A.
Just as part-time compensation for course teaching is inexpensive when compared with full-timers’ salaries (even when
these are pro-rated to account for the fact that only a portion is directly devoted to teaching), so the rates for committee
service and other Additional Duties established in the union contract are very affordable as compared with the cost of adding
full-time lines. The problem appears to be one of perception and accounting, as divisions may view Additional Duties compensation
as an “extra” while discounting the problems that result from loading more and more work onto salaried faculty
members.
Q. Full-time faculty don’t get to vote on
the union contract, so why should unionized part-time faculty get to vote in faculty meetings?
A. There is no contradiction between union participation and participation in governance. The union contract
addresses our rights and responsibilities as employees of the university, while a role in governance is basic to our full
involvement as scholars and educators. When ACT-UAW first began to organize, many full-time faculty members wanted to unionize
and were prevented only by the New School’s legal maneuvers. Those full-timers certainly did not expect to forfeit a
role in governance as a result of union involvement. In a great number of colleges and universities, such as CUNY and SUNY,
full-time faculty are unionized and of course they also play a fully enfranchised role in faculty governance.
Q. Doesn’t involvement in academic planning and governance mean that part-timers are
exercising managerial functions? Isn’t that against labor law?
A. Part-timers want a voice in academic
planning and governance; we are not asking for managerial or administrative authority. We simply want to be one part of a
larger faculty process that in most cases has an advisory relationship to the upper administration rather than independent
decision-making powers. (For example, decisions taken by the Faculty Senate are advisory to the President and Provost.) In
extensive hearings before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to determine the composition of the ACT-UAW bargaining
unit at the New School, the Labor Board heard evidence of part-timers’ participation in a range of functions including
departmental and divisional committees and even divisional executive boards. The Board determined that these involvements
were not managerial in nature.
Q. Administrators sometimes cite
the Yeshiva Decision as forbidding a greater role for part-timers in academic affairs. What is Yeshiva and what does it mandate?
A. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by Yeshiva University that Yeshiva’s full-time
faculty were managers of the university. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) provides for bargaining rights for employees,
but not for managers, in the private sector (while state laws govern bargaining at public colleges and universities). The
Yeshiva Decision said, in effect, that private universities have the right to block union organizing efforts by their full-time
faculties. It did not abolish pre-existing unions that include full-timers, which is why the full-time faculties of Long Island
University and some other private schools in the New York area remain unionized. Nor did it require private institutions to
exclude their full-time faculties from collective bargaining efforts; it merely allowed such institutions to “invoke
Yeshiva” as a means of achieving such exclusion. As previously noted, the NLRB has already found that New School part-timers’
routine participation in academic planning and governance does not make them “managers.” It should be noted that
many observers believe the Yeshiva Decision is legally flawed and will eventually be overturned, given the strict limitations
on most full-timers’ authority vis-à-vis the actual managerial powers of university administrations. For as long
as Yeshiva remains in force, however, it is important not to misconstrue its actual restrictions in ways that undermine collegiality
and limit faculty power.
