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Letters: Former UNH professor speaks out against AAUP ad

Published: Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Updated: Tuesday, March 2, 2010 01:03

The recent announcement by the UNH chapter of AAUP of a proposed boycott of summer school, and what amounts to a request that students do the same, is simply the latest reminder that a true academic community and organized labor are fundamentally incompatible.
During my working years, I twice opposed the introduction of collective bargaining for the UNH faculty. The first time I was on the winning side. The second time, obviously, I wasn't. My reasons had to do with the assault on professionalism and dangers to the community involved, but more than anything they looked forward with fear to the almost inevitable use by the union of some kind of weapon. Unlike the case in the employer-employee relationship in an industrial setting, where strikes and other sanctions can properly and sometimes successfully be directed against corporate heads whose own economic interests are affected, sanctions by a faculty can do direct damage to only one party. That party is the students, with whom the faculty is supposed to be engaged in the common enterprise of learning. One might add the parents who pay the bills.
I am glad I retired before being subjected to compulsory financial support of the collective bargaining unit. Its most recent threat has only reinforced my continued belief that unionism is a destructive force on the campus.
Perhaps it is time for another faculty vote.

Charles E. Clark
Professor Emeritus of History
 

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3 comments

A Professor here at UNH
Mon Mar 8 2010 12:50
To Another Professor,

Actually, its working out quite well thank you. And not at all due to the ATB raises negotiated by the union.
If I was allowed to drop the mandatory payments to the union coffers (I assume that is how the union is planning on paying people who choose to *not* teach summer school this year by the way), I would gladly do so for the opportunity to negotiate my own raise, based upon merit and what I had actually produced over the previous year.
Lets face it, the summer school boycott decision was made by less than 30 people.
The union's increasingly strident statements are rapidly degenerating into name calling, and are earning the disrespect of faculty all over campus. Its quite ridiculous.
As many others have pointed out, times are truly tough all around. For the faculty union to be spending so much time and energy on this situation (as opposed to more substantive issues such as the current hiring freeze, the amount of unsupervised teaching done by graduate students, etc.) this university would be a better place for all of the faculty.

Another professor
Thu Mar 4 2010 09:43
I suppose we can assume that since "a Professor here at UNH" objects to the faculty union, and to paying his/her fair share of collective bargaining costs, and sees his/her economic status as an entirely individual enterprise, that he/she has also had the integrity to return the raises and benefits gained for him/her by union representation, and has refused the protections won by the collective action of his/her colleagues in the union. That would be the honorable thing to do, right? So, HAVE you accepted only raises at the level of the initial offers of the administration in the various contract negotiations over the years (usually in the neighborhood of about 1%)? Are you paying on your own the extra contributions to medical and other benefits the administration has variously tried to impose on faculty? Have you opted out of your various contractual protections? And, when you stop "actively considering" and actually decide that you DO want to teach in the summer, you'll accept the summer salaries that used to be paid to faculty BEFORE there was a union, right? If you think you're a hotshot academic star who would do better without the union, you need only look at the contract to be reminded that the administration is free, at any time, to pay an individual faculty member a higher salary based on the administration's estimate of that faculty member's exceptional performance (see article 16.3.1). How's that working out for you?
A Professor here at UNH
Wed Mar 3 2010 15:43
As a UNH faculty member who is very frustrated with the AAUP and its behavior, I am now actively considering teaching a summer school class even though I had not originally planned on it. The AAUP is using the money they forcibly take from me to offer to other faculty to *not* teach summer school. This is ridiculous.






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