Faculty Union and Faculty Senate Co-Existence

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection between faculty unions and faculty senates along with the costs and benefits that each pays and receives relative to one another. More specifically, the authors examine the impact of academic collective bargaining on shared governance traditions, providing an analysis of whether the relationship of unions and governance systems has been symbiotic or non-symbiotic. The authors also explore the overall beneficial and negative outcomes of academic collective bargaining in higher education before developing and presenting a framework of four models of academic collective bargaining that offers historical descriptive value as well as prescriptions for academic collective bargaining in the future. The paper makes a significant contribution to the faculty governance and higher education collective bargaining literature by being among the first to provide a comprehensive review of the faculty governance literature over the last four decades and to present an integrative framework of the possible relationships between faculty unions, faculty senates, and institutions of higher education.