7. Anti-Union Intimidation

Many campuses have only reluctantly recognized the right of faculty and graduate students to form unions. Still others have resisted to the utmost extent any efforts at unionizing. Students and faculty do not give up their rights when they enter a college, and those rights must include the right to form a union and collectively bargaining for better working conditions. Whatever the arguments pro and con for unions in academia, such a debate is possible only once the fundamental right to organize is acknowledged. In addition to being denied the right to organize, faculty, students, and staff who support unions have faced sanctions in retaliation for their beliefs.

7(a). New York University: education professor Joel Westheimer was denied tenure in July, 2001. Westheimer claims that the denial is due to the fact that in 1999, Westheimer was the only untenured professor to testify on behalf of the Graduate Students Organizing Committee (GSOC) at a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing. Until he testified, Westheimer had always received highly positive reviews.

Westheimer received unanimously positive reviews from his department and outside reviewers, but a negative University-wide review declared that he had insufficient scholarship. Westheimer has published more than a dozen articles, and his 1998 book, Among Schoolteachers: Community, Autonomy, and Ideology in Teachers' Work (Teachers College Press), has been widely cited and praised. Robert Cohen, a tenured education professor at N.Y.U., called Westheimer "on par with, or ahead of everyone who went up for tenure this year" in the education school, and "definitely is ahead of most people who get tenure."

(Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2001; Washington Square News, Oct. 29, 2001)

7(b). State University of New York at Buffalo: Barbara Bono, chair of the English department, was removed from her job by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Charles L. Stinger. Bono was dismissed from her administrative position because she refused to sign a May 17, 2001 letter to teaching assistants. The letter threatened the TAs would be "subject to serious penalties" if they failed to turn in grades, including losing their jobs, and that they would be considered to be breaking the law if they withheld grades.

Stinger declared that Bono had been dismissed as chair because "she expressed considerable sympathy for the student situation and didn't see that forceful action was required. Being unwilling to take action in those circumstances made it impossible for her to fulfill her responsibilities as chair." Bono said that she refused to sign the memo because "I was not going to turn to threatening my students."

(Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2001)

ANALYSIS: Signing a threatening letter to TAs (especially when serious doubt existed about the factual claim that students could be prosecuted for disobeying) is not among the necessary duties of a department chair, and it is clear that Bono was removed for expressing “sympathy” with students seeking a union. The effective banishment of any pro-union faculty from the position of a department chair is a violation of academic freedom because it punishes them for their views.

7(c). University of Massachusetts at Amherst: When undergraduate resident assistants voted to form a union in March, 2002, the administration threatened to eliminate their jobs rather than allow a union to exist in the residence halls. The administration continues to refuse to negotiate with the elected union.

7(d). Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College: George Trimble, an assistant English professor, had an unblemished 19-year record at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. But when he refused to use required computer software to write his class syllabus, he was terminated.

Trouble began when Trimble's proposals prompted the faculty's unanimous no-confidence vote for Travis Kirkland, college president. Trimble organized and became president of WVEA/Southern, a faculty labor organization.

The president ordered all faculty to use the Instructional Performance Systems Incorporated computer software program for writing course syllabi. It measured competency-based goals for later use to evaluate student achievement. Trimble and the Humanities Division objected to IPSI as an invasion of academic freedom.

After Trimble failed to attend mandatory training meetings for using the software, the college issued a memo advising him that his resistance to the software was a "flagrant and willful disregard for directions and/or inquiries of your employer" that constituted "insubordination." When the professor again refused to use the software, the college terminated him. The state supreme court ruled, “Trimble cannot depend upon the First Amendment for refusing to attend the training sessions and for refusing to use the IPSI program” and dismissed academic freedom concerns.

The court decided, “Because of Mr. Trimble's property interest in continued employment with the College and his previously unblemished record, due process required the College to utilize progressive disciplinary measures against Mr. Trimble.” However, the court added, “we are not relieving him of any requirement by the College that he comply with its policies involving meeting attendance and participation in the IPSI program.”

ANALYSIS: The creation of a syllabus is one of the key functions of a college professor, and being forced to adopt a standardized system without any clear benefits for students is an intrusion of the administration into the proper realm of faculty control.

No one asserted that Trimble’s syllabi were inadequate, or even that the new syllabi would improve the quality of education. Such decisions are properly left up to professors, who are trained professionals in their fields. If an administrator can force all professors to use a certain system for making syllabi, then there is no logical end to this authority: administrators could dictate textbook choices, teaching styles, grading policies, and all aspects of a course, even when professors deem these choices to be harmful to the education of students.

Any assertion that a professor is to be dismissed for “insubordination” must be regarded as highly suspect. Faculty are not mere employees who are given orders and then tossed out the door for having a different opinion. Faculty share governing power, particularly over matters of their direct professional expertise, the curriculum and classroom practices. A faculty member can be fired only for betraying the interests of students by misconduct, and not for failing to obey an order that a president does not have the authority to give.

Trimble v. West Virginia, 209 W. Va. 420; 549 S.E.2d 294; 2001 (W. Va. Supreme Court)