Shaun Richman

I am continuing to guest blog at DMIblog, writing about unionization, academia and Kentucky River, and giving Pace University a black eye. This is my second post, which appears there. Please direct comments to that site.

The National Labor Relations Board’s terrible Kentucky River decisions, which this week greatly expanded the definition of “supervisors,” has handed the bosses a powerful new union busting tool. The implications for these decisions go far beyond hospitals and nurses and may eventually deny the right to form a union to all professional employees (perhaps a quarter of the entire workforce in a few short years, according to the NLRB).

The union rights of employees in higher education have been under assault for much longer. Back in 1980, the Supreme Court denied the right to organize to most college professors, ruling that if they sat on advisory and recommendatory committees, and had a say in recruitment, policies and curriculum, then they were de facto management. The decision put an abrupt halt to a modest wave of faculty organizing in the crazy, radical 70’s. Prior to this week’s NLRB decision, many faculty who once might have been considered management were ripe for organizing, with a new crop of CEO-style college presidents (like Pace University’s half-million dollar man, David Caputo, who, rest assured, is the villain of this post as well) imposing a corporate structure on colleges and ramming their policies down the throats of politically weakened faculty (Unfortunately, it would be hard to find any full-time professor who does not exercise “independent judgement” or “responsibly direct” someone, if only the department secretary).

The Academy is a strange medieval institution that has somehow survived into the early 21st century. It’s funny, then, that college CEOs have, as Labor Notes‘ Kim Moody has noted, turned to an equally old system to supplant it: the shape up. Colleges and universities have increasingly replaced full-time tenured faculty with adjunct professors, part-timers who make a fraction of the salary and benefits of full-timers and enjoy none of the free speech and job protections of tenure. Adjuncts account for a third of all faculty at four year institutions and as much as two thirds of the faculty at two year institutions.

Since nobody could argue (with a straight face, at least) that adjuncts have any real power or authority, they have retained the legal right to organize unions, and many have done so. In the New York area alone, the adjuncts at NYU, New School, Marymount among many others have organized in recent years. In 2004, adjuncts at Pace University (who make up a staggering 62% of the faculty) voted to form a union with the American Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers. Pace’s union busting advisors initially used some of the legal delay tactics that were eventually deployed against their bus drivers. The cutest bit of their cretinous creativity was arguing that the National Labor Relations Act (which, after all, governs relations between “Employees”, their “Unions” and “Employers”) did not apply to them because NYSUT, a state federation of local unions, was not a “Union”, itself, and that since the adjuncts’ petition was filed in between semesters when they are not teaching and not collecting a paycheck that they were not really “Employees” of the University, which was not, therefore, an “Employer” (which begs the question, what the hell are they doing to fill all that real estate down there at 1 Pace Plaza?).

In the face of their adjuncts’ rebellion, Pace decided to delay at the bargaining table, where dozens of negotiating sessions over the last two years have resulted in no real agreements on job security, compensation for office hours with students or pay increases that begin to approach parity with full-timers. Their goal is to frustrate and discourage the adjuncts, hoping they will abandon their union. “They are certainly not in any rush to come to an agreement,” says John Pawlowski, an adjunct professor of Biology who serves as president of the adjuncts’ union. “The University is resistant to its staff organizing, like any other employer,” says Pawlowski. Once upon a time, the university would have been better than “any other employer,” but, as Pawlowski notes, these days “most of [Pace’s] Board of Trustees come from the business world.”

Just like a corporate board, Pace’s trustees recently formed a presidential compensation committee that concluded that the university simply must receive a huge pay increase in order to stay competitive with executive compensation across academia. When asked exactly whether the members of Pace’s executive compensation experts had any experience in academia, Board member Anneilo Bianco cooly responded, “No, we’re all business people.”

Pace’s CEO, David Caputo, who “reluctantly” accepted a $100,000 raise has been pushing “merit” increases of less than 2.5% for the adjuncts. Since adjuncts don’t sit on committees, or even spend much time on campus outside of their lectures, their “merit” can only be determined by one thing: student evaluation forms. This makes perfect corporate sense if you view students and their parents as customers, degrees as product and teachers as temporary part-time workers. Just like McDonalds polls its customers, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the friendliness of your server?,” Pace asks how clearly your professor explained material. Surely there’s no connection between a student’s anticipated grade and the rating they give their professor, and, certainly, such a salary policy won’t exacerbate the very real problem of grade inflation. Then again, maybe high grades are the sign of a successful business and happy customers?

That’s why the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace, the AFT, NYSUT and our friends in the labor movement will counter Pace’s self-congratulatory centennial celebrations this Friday, October 6th at 2:00 pm to demand that the university finally negotiate in good faith with its employees. What’s at stake is not merely what kind of education Pace will provide in its next hundred years, but the quality of higher education in general.

I am currently guest blogging at DMIblog, highlighting the difficulties of union organizing through the NLRB (pre-Kentucky River, even!), specifically at Pace University. This is my first post, which appears there. Please direct comments to that site.

The business of union busting is booming, guided by law firms and consultants that are adept at manipulating the legal process to delay union recognition and stretch out their campaigns of harassment and intimidation to defeat workers’ attempts to gain a voice at work. The hallowed halls of academia are not immune to the ugliness of union busting, not with CEO-style presidents like Pace University’s David Caputo, who recently gave himself a $100,000 raise while doling out meager “merit” increases of less than 2.5% to his staff.

It’s no wonder that the employees of Pace have begun to organize. What is a wonder is that Pace will be celebrating an “employee recognition day” on Friday as part of the University’s centennial while refusing to recognize a tiny union of bus drivers who first successfully voted to form a union a year ago. The case of Pace is instructive of how the National Labor Relations Act has been perverted over the last 70 years to become a legal framework for union busting.

Two years ago, the adjunct professors at Pace organized a union with the American Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers to gain some measure of the respect and dignity that full-time professors are granted, to say nothing of a comparable salary. The University is trying to discourage the adjuncts at the bargaining table by half-heartedly engaging in dozens of fruitless negotiating sessions. They still have no contract, but that’s a story for a future post.

When the 19 employees of the university’s tiny transportation department decided to follow the adjuncts’ lead, Pace was determined to never recognize their union. “Overtime was being given out by favoritism, some guys got coffee breaks and some guys didn’t,” complains Jamie Cruz, a six-year veteran of the department who is now President of the Pace Transportation Union. “Our boss was running a dictatorship. It was his way or no way.” Cruz and almost all of his co-workers signed union cards last September. An NLRB election was scheduled for October 20th and Pace commenced an all-out campaign of captive audience meetings and high-pressure one-on-one meetings to break the workers’ resolve. A typical management anti-union campaign (and Pace is nothing if not a typical anti-union boss) is oddly schizophrenic. Kinda like Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” One minute, they’re threatening their employees’ jobs and benefits. The next, they’re apologizing for past mistakes and begging for “one more chance.”

Despite the fact that management deposed the department’s hated dictator the day before the election, 13 of the 17 votes cast were for the union. That should have been the last word on the bus drivers’ choice to form a union. Instead, Pace objected to the election on the flimsiest of pretexts; that by the time management’s observers made it to the polling site, the NLRB agent had run out of “Observer” buttons. How this supposedly ruined the impartiality of the election is frankly irrelevant, even to Pace. It was simply an excuse to delay union recognition and to continue to hammer away at the bus drivers with the Ike Turner routine.

In November, seventeen of the bus drivers (including management’s observer!) signed a petition demanding that Pace respect their choice and recognize their union. However, in the interest of getting to the bargaining table quickly, the union agreed to forgo hearings and to conduct another election. In January of this year, the transportation employees of Pace University voted for a second time to form a union, albeit by a slightly smaller margin (the Ike Turner routine worked on three of the workers). Pace objected to the results of this election, too, complaining that they never got a hearing for the previous election. If they had gotten that hearing, and the NLRB actually found merit in their laughable appeals, the remedy would have been to merely hold the election again – as was done, resulting in victory for the union. This appeal, and twelve others, was the legal equivalent of a child crying, “No fair! Do over!” and was duly rejected by the NLRB.

It was not until April, however, that the NLRB finally certified the bus drivers’ union. Pace University continues to refuse to recognize the union and to bargain a contract. At this point, one year after the workers first formed their union, the NLRB has filed unfair labor practice charges against Pace and is taking them to federal court for breaking the law. It could take another six months before the U.S. Court of Appeals inevitably rules that Pace University is breaking the law and directs them to finally sit down at a negotiating table.

All this because a simple majority of a tiny department of bus drivers signed union cards and continue to support their union. Common sense would say, just recognize the union based upon the cards. Many unions are increasingly (and successfully) moving towards card check recognition, whereby an employer is compelled to “voluntarily” recognize a union if the majority of workers sign. One of our best shots at labor law reform is Ted Kennedy’s Employee Free Choice Act, which would legally compel employers to recognize unions if the majority of their employees sign union authorization cards. No elections, appeals, no reruns. Just cards. Look for Democrats to send this bill to George Bush’s desk for a prompt veto should they win Congress. Look for the business lobby to continue to rail against card check, and, left unchecked, look for Bush-appointed NLRB to curb card check recognition.

Finally, look for the Pace Transportation Union, the AFT, NYSUT and our friends in the labor movement to crash Pace University’s 100th Anniversary celebration at 1 Pace Plaza, across the street from New York City Hall, this Friday, October 6th at 2:00 pm, to demand that Pace recognize the union on their employee recognition day.