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Hibel: Dr. Cain, you have a Bachelor’s degree in history and a Master’s and Doctorate in higher education. 1 Would you explain how these two areas of interest merged to lead you where you are today in your research and teaching?
Cain: I considered applying to doctoral programs in history while I was an undergraduate but came to realize that I was not ready. Instead I sought and found a position at my alma mater, which eventually led me into the study of higher education. When I entered my doctoral program I thought that historical perspectives would inform my understanding but it was not until I was really embedded in the program and working on a research project with my advisor, Jana Nidiffer, that I realized that my own work would rely on historical methods. When I started studying the history of higher education I had little knowledge of unions and certainly none of faculty unions; they are often left out of our dialogue. But the more I looked at the history of academic freedom, the more I realized that the AFT played key roles. Standard discussions dated the rise of faculty unions to the 1960s but I kept uncovering evidence that they were important before that period. I became curious about why they existed and what they could tell us about the development of modern American higher education. What started out as background for a different project became foreground.
Hibel: How and why have the reasons for faculty unionization changed over the years?
Cain: I think in some ways they have changed tremendously but in others very little. If we look at the first faculty unions founded in the late 1910s and then those founded in the 1930s, they could not collectively bargain, so they differed in important ways from what we often think of as unions in the modern era–though non-bargaining affiliates of unions still exist and are important. The first AFT college local at Howard University was founded because of what one member called the “degradation of faculty in university affairs” and also to try to encourage greater federal financial support for the institution. The second at the University of Illinois was formed both to increase faculty salaries and to bridge divides between what were termed by the local papers the “brain workers” and “hand workers.” Another early union was founded explicitly in response to a violation of academic freedom. In the 1930s many faculty who joined unions did so for societal reasons, as part of the Popular Front or to support K-12 teachers who wanted to unionize. The big shift in the modern era is the ability to collectively bargain. This shift, which dates to the 1960s, changed the terms and opened up different possibilities for attending to local conditions. Combined with economic retrenchment and its effects on salaries and working conditions, unionization proved an attractive option for some, especially in the 1970s. Even in the modern era, though, part of the push on many campuses is for a broader change in educational policy and some joined not to affect their own positions or salaries but in response to the shifts affecting higher education writ large.
Hibel: In an article 2 discussing faculty unions, the author states, “The only real difference between unionized and nonunionized faculty is that, with a legal faculty union, the administration by law must listen to faculty views and truly share governance of the university.” What are your thoughts on this analysis?
Cain: I understand the perspective and the AAUP has made quite similar claims–unionization can provide legal protections and can, through the bargaining process, provide enforceable means for faculty to participate in governance. I suspect, though, the specific statement might have been part of a larger ongoing conversation about the role and appropriateness of unionization for faculty. Some within college faculties are opposed to unionization and fearful that it will change not just the nature of faculty employment but what it means to be a faculty member. My guess is that the comment is more of a response to that specific argument against unions than a broader statement of what unions might provide.
Hibel: What are some of the other reasons that faculty organize and/or join unions?
Cain: There are a variety of reasons that any individual might join or organize a union. The most significant are local issues involving salary, working conditions, faculty governance, and procedural protections for academic freedom and tenure. Some research has shown that one of the most important things that unions can do is provide more structured and explicit criteria for tenure and promotion. As we noted, some might join for broader social and societal reasons. We might think of social movement unionism, through which unions focus not just on the local work issues but on bigger issues affecting society. The unions have long argued that they are not only about faculty or teacher interests but that their purposes include benefitting the entire system of education. And, of course, these things can get blurred together: an argument against the increasing casualization of faculty workers can simultaneously be about providing structures and supports that can improve education broadly and about maintaining jobs. A few other big picture ideas are that joining an existing union is a very different thing than organizing a local and the pressures to do so are likewise different, and that, as Gordon Arnold argued a decade ago, each instance of unionization is simultaneously a national and a local event.
Hibel: What are some of the perceived advantages and disadvantages to joining a union?
Cain: I think that perceived is a key word here. The arguments for unions involve providing or solidifying a faculty voice in institutional decision-making, affecting salaries and salary disparities, improving the terms of faculty work, and providing formalized grievance procedures. In the face of negative environments and a lack of trust, unions can provide a means to reestablish and improve communication between faculty and administrators. Arguments against unionization often relate to issues of professional authority and judgment, the belief that it will negatively affect collegiality, concerns about bureaucracy, and the fear of homogenization. So, where one person might say that a benefit of unionization is that it might provide greater consistency in salaries across disciplines, others might argue that that is a disadvantage that reduces institutional flexibility. When we consider a decision about whether to join an existing local that is a bargaining agent, we might also have fair share issues. Where there is a union as a bargaining agent a faculty member’s options might be limited to joining the union and having a say in it or not joining the union but paying a portion of the dues as a bargaining fee. So, again, there are different issues when deciding whether to join an existing union than when considering organizing a union local on a specific campus.
Hibel: In some professions, there can be a negative stigma associated with belonging to a union as it can correspond to not being a team player or viewed as being uncooperative by management. Do you think this idea exists in the field of higher education?
Cain: There is a definitely a stigma in some quarters and some faculty, especially those without the protections of tenure, might worry about appearing uncooperative, but the issues are not always related. Status, identity and affiliations can be important and some faculty members believe that unionization is, if not exactly beneath them, then at least not appropriate for them. And some do actually believe that it is beneath them and that they are professionals, rather than laborers. Many people still associate unions with the “hand workers” mentioned above, even though the modern situation looks somewhat different, and some perceive status benefits from such distinctions. Issues of unionization get tied up with those of professionalization; some see unions as a way to promote professionalism and improve status, while others see it as antithetical to professionalism.
Hibel: Faculty unions at Ohio’s public universities were recently in the news regarding the issue of full-time faculty being categorized as management of the university. This change would result in their inability to participate in collective bargaining. 3 What are your thoughts on full-time faculty being a part of university ‘management’ with the reasoning proposed that they often do participate in hiring decisions, curriculum design, grading decisions and other major university decisions?
Cain: The more complete context of this discussion goes back to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva University, which offered the same finding regarding tenure-stream faculty at that specific institution. It is, perhaps, interesting that faculty members at similar institutions who play similar roles might be defined differently, though the Yeshiva decision actually noted that the finding was institution-specific. Certainly tenure-line and tenured faculty can play roles in governance that can be different than or more robust than the roles played by some others in colleges and universities, although they don’t frequently have the type of budgetary power or actual authority that one thinks of as management. And, professors’ actual legal power is often more limited than the power that they might have traditionally exercised–so, for example, a university technically assigns grades and can legally overturn a faculty member’s grade, just rarely chooses to do so. There are also a few bigger issues at play: one is the growth of administrative infrastructure in higher education, which has affected decision-making and authority. Another is the relative decline of tenure-stream faculty, which can reduce overall faculty managerial authority relative to administrators but can, in some instances, increase it for tenure-stream faculty relative to non-tenure-stream faculty. Just as importantly, this argument about faculty as management is part of a broader attack on public sector unions and some of those who adopt it do so in an effort to weaken unions, rather than as relating to the specific roles, rights and responsibilities of faculty.
Hibel: According to the American Association of University Professors, “21 percent of all universities have faculty unions. Among public universities, 35 percent of universities have unions.” 4 Do these numbers surprise you? Do you think these percentages will change much in the future?
Cain: I am not really surprised, though my guess is that those numbers might be just a bit low. Part of the issue involves how some of the terms are being used. By union, for example, does the statement refer to only locals that have collective bargained contracts? By faculty, does the statement refer to tenure-stream faculty or a more robust understanding of who is actually doing the teaching in college classrooms? The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education is set to release a new report on bargaining units next month, so we will have more details then. As far as changes, it will depend on a number of things. We are in an era of significant restructuring in how we staff higher education that could work either to expand or contain unionization. Some observers think that the increasing demands on full-time faculty will push more to consider it and we have recently seen several new locals organized. Also, the casualization of faculty labor makes unionization more attractive to faculty but also more difficult to undertake. At the same time I think it is also too early to say whether the larger attacks on unionization, especially unions in the public sector, will continue and make it more difficult to organize or whether they will spur a backlash that furthers the unionization.
Hibel: Again considering the statistics above, that means that 79 percent of all universities do not have a faculty union. Why do you think this is the case? Are the remaining private and public university professors satisfied with their role within the university decisions or do you think that there is hesitation to participate in a union for the fear of being ‘worse off’?
Cain: Part of the answer is related to the Yeshiva ruling, which makes it very difficult for faculty at private colleges to bargain. As the situation in Ohio demonstrates, at public universities unionization is controlled by state laws, some of which ban public sector unions and others of which limit the tools that unions can use to be effective. For part-time faculty there are additional barriers due to the contingent nature of the work, although some are making strides. Organizing is very difficult and time-consuming work in any sector and, regardless of their satisfaction with the roles in governance, some are reluctant or unable to undertake it. Others are opposed to it for philosophical, political or pragmatic reasons. Unions are one way for faculty to gain influence and in some situations are the right choice, but there are non-union mechanisms as well. Some are satisfied with them or satisfied enough with them, including those who don’t want much role in governance as long as they are allowed to do what they view as their work.
Hibel: In addition to studying unionization, you also study ‘academic freedom and the ability of academic administrators to foster or forestall academic freedom.’ What is the definition of academic freedom as it pertains to rights of faculty?
Cain: The AAUP’s early tripartite notion of the freedom to teach, freedom to research, and the freedom to pursue the full rights of citizenship are core to our basic understandings. Matthew Finkin and Robert Post have also done a useful service in their recent book For the Common Good. In it, they highlight the importance of intramural speech rights to the concept. In other words, part of academic freedom is being able to discuss, analyze and critique institutional operations. Some people argue that faculty are claiming special privileges through academic freedom but supporters of academic freedom counter that it is not about special privileges but about the special roles of colleges and universities. The underlying belief is that for our institutions of higher education to create and preserve knowledge and to educate their students, faculty must be provided the freedom to use their expertise in the classroom and in designing classroom environments, to ask unpopular questions, to challenge accepted beliefs, to follow evidence where it leads them, and to not be punished for offending powerful stakeholders. Academic freedom does not mean that faculty are free to do anything that they please–organizations such as the AAUP are clear that there are corresponding responsibilities–but relies on an understanding that the needs of higher education require that the broad freedoms exist.
Hibel: Would you briefly summarize what your research has found regarding academic freedom–either positive or negative?
Cain: My work on the topic has been historical, examining how large national organizations such as the AAUP, ACLU and AFT interacted around the concept in the years leading up to World War II. Modern protections, such as the basics of our tenure system and the standard tenure clock, are rooted in principles but are the specific result of political negotiations undertaken amid the tumult of the 1930s. Some of my work has looked more closely at specific challenges to academic freedom and how faculty experienced them, such as those involving fears of un-American professors during World War I. Importantly, faculty were often complicit in or even the source of the challenges that threatened and ended faculty careers. Even as faculty were proclaiming certain rights they were unsure of how to enact them and inconsistent in their own behaviors.
Hibel: Ending our conversation today with a question related to the area of careers in higher education–you have been ranked as ‘excellent’ by students since 2005 at the University of Illinois and in 2011 you received the ‘Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award.’ It is apparent that you are a well respected professor. What makes you a successful teacher? And, also, what makes you a successful researcher?
Cain: To whatever extent that I am successful, I think that the main factors are engagement, being supported, having good role models, and being put into positions where I can succeed. I enjoy teaching and working with students, so it is easy to be enthusiastic about it and spend time on it. Plus I co-direct an initiative that fosters course-based student research and, in doing so, has created a pedagogical community where we can exchange ideas about teaching, share assignments, offer suggestions on syllabi, etc. I don’t think we do enough of that at research universities. I also enjoy my research, especially the archival work, which again makes me want to dedicate the time and energy to it. Piecing together an historical argument can be challenging but it also fun and rewarding. It is probably most important to note that the conditions of faculty work matter. I am fortunate enough to have a position that allows for, and provides the infrastructure to support, a balance of responsibilities and efforts. Many who teach in higher education are not in that position. It is one of the reasons why the increased reliance on unsupported and unprotected adjunct faculty is such a concern.