Collective Bargaining, a New Common Law for College Professors

Abstract

Increasingly, more college faculties are voting to join collective bargaining units or unions. In 1979, 648 campuses selected to have their conditions of employment covered by collective bargaining agreements, while only 77 campuses rejected unionization (Faculty Bargaining, 1979). The rise of unions on college campuses has been slow compared to unionization among elementary and secondary teachers (Angell & Kelley, 1977; Kemerer & Baldridge, 1975). Hagengruber (1978) in his review of why faculty members accept or reject unions in higher education suggested that the level of needed protection from management was the major reason; and that unions are most desirable at the two year college level and least desirable at four year colleges and universities. This trend appears to be continuing, and those who have opted for unions, (Ernst, 1977), are suggesting ways to increase faculty benefits from unions. Many research university faculties have been forced into unions, because they are part of a larger bargaining unit with other four year and two year colleges and often outvoted; which is the case with public institutions in Massachusetts (Carey, 1978) and New York (DiLorenzo, 1978). Union leaders (Nielsen & Polishook, 1979) tend to picture collective bargaining agreements as just another mechanism for formalizing existing college rules and guidelines found in college handbooks. But, a study by the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education (Garbarino, 1977) found this not to be true and recommended that higher education should establish its own distinctive pattern of collective bargaining. It should be noted however, that rules permitting collective bargaining and the extent of collective bargaining differ from state to state (Zirkel, 1976); thus, limiting this discussion of collective bargaining to colleges and universities in those states where collective bargaining is permitted, the trend toward arbitration (settling of disputes under the union contract) in the public sector is increasingly becoming similar to that found in the private sector (Vaccaro, 1978). However, one thing seems clear college professors do not understand the common of collective bargaining, as set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the steel trilogy cases (United Steelworkers, 1960a, 1960b, 1960c) of 1960. With collective bargaining agreements, traditional concepts of due process and rights guaranteed by the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution are now waived. The common law of arbitration is the central theme of this article and will be discussed in detail, starting with a brief history of this new law.