Absolutely not!!!!  This is not about "us" vs "them"  - it is about conflicting visions and styles.  There are other stakeholders in this, including students, the community and the other citizens of the state.  As a university, we have many differing views, and the mature way to hash these out would be in an open forum.  This is a time consuming and messy way to work, but that is the nature of the beast.  As faculty, our responsibility is to present the facts (not rumors, not personal biases) and to contribute to a meaningful dialogue.  This is a very difficult time, but we must not let our passions destroy our professional image.  Don't get frustrated and act like some of the other participants in this struggle.

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Originally posted by: Employee
" But Donna, unions are what results when you use the "business" model.  It seems that the administration wants to use only part of the business model.  If we are to be viewed as employees (as Klumb and Hewes think) and just follow the boss's orders, then the boss has to grow up and realize employees have the right to a union.  If they didn't want to play hardball, they shouldn't have thrown out the first pitch.  I know they really didn't want the business model, but rather the "plantation model".  Slavery is outlawed and so we now have unions. I also object to your reference to "conflicting visions and styles".  All of higher education operates under "shared governance".  It must under SACS rules; otherwise you will have people educated in science teaching economics.  SFT took liberties that he had no right to take.  If the IHL doesn't correct things, you better get use to the formation of unions. I don’t like it either, but SFT didn’t ask my opinion of the direction he took.  "

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I came from a unionized system (SUNY) It had some drawbacks -- but not nearly as many as a nonunionized business model. Our faculty Senate received monthly oral reports from the President of the Institution, and our faculty was heavily engaged in as a norm all of the things this faculty have been shut out of. It was clearly understood the President was responsible not only to the SUNY Board of Trustees but to the faculty as well. The union also had representatives on the Board, as I remember. It was very difficult for the Board to act without full knowlege of the faculty. In ket areas that we are wrestling with (distance learning, on-line education, etc.,) the SUNY system was far ahead of us on handling these issues because the faculty was involved in drawing up how these processes would work in terms of maintaining integrity of learning, assessment, etc. from the beginning of the integration of the learning modalities.

 

 

 

 

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Originally posted by: Donna Davis
"...  There are other stakeholders in this, including students, the community and the other citizens of the state.  As a university, we have many differing views, and the mature way to hash these out would be in an open forum.  ..."

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I think you are confused over some issues here, Donna.  Yes, there are many people the University affects.  We can call them stakeholders.  But do all the stakeholders have the same credentials when it comes to the operation of an institution of higher learning.  The answer is certainly not.  Even our own administration at the highest levels is ignorant of many standard rules of academic integrity. They are learning about SACS as they go. 

The general community doesn't possess the necessary knowledge to establish the direction of a University.  Many also have a conflict of interest because their apartments, restaurants, car dealerships,  etc. depend on, not the quality of USM's academic programs, but rather the quantity of students, which they call customers.  Other than the faculty, who will stand up for quality so the citizens are not given a "fraud of a University" so a few can make money?

You say, "As a university, we have many differing views,..." .  But all of these views are not equal. Many are uninforned about academics and academic intergrety, for example Thames, Grimes and Malone.  Some faculty are imbred and have little experience of universities functions outside this region. 

 

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Originally posted by: Outside Observer
"The Wager Act (NLRA) as amended gives most private sectors the right to unionize and places a legal responsibility on management to negotiate in good faith with duly elected represetatives of the employees (the union). The Railway Labor Act covers the transportation sector (railroads and airliens). The Civil Service Refrom Act give these rights to federal employees. But unless Mississippi has passed legislation giving university facilty specifically the right to form and join unions, and places the duty to bargain in good faith on the shoulders of management...you can join any union you want...but the university system doesn't have to negotiate with you"

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Thanks O.O.  I guess if SFT wins, we will just have to push to get the laws establish in MS for this to happen.  It sure won't be quiet around here for a while.  (Hope the unrest doesn't hurt business and the retirement community.)

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Originally posted by: Outside Observer
"The Wager Act (NLRA) as amended gives most private sectors the right to unionize and places a legal responsibility on management to negotiate in good faith with duly elected represetatives of the employees (the union). The Railway Labor Act covers the transportation sector (railroads and airliens). The Civil Service Refrom Act give these rights to federal employees. But unless Mississippi has passed legislation giving university facilty specifically the right to form and join unions, and places the duty to bargain in good faith on the shoulders of management...you can join any union you want...but the university system doesn't have to negotiate with you"

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Please don't mistake me for advocating thiis action just yet -- I'm very sure it would backfire. However, the issues of unions, union organizing or negotiating aren't only legal ones. They really are issues of power. Bosses tend to have the power of (sometimes) law, money, and often community mores.  On the other, any organized group has the power of the services they provide and the ability to withhold them. This can happenin the presence of a union or not. In fact, the idea of a union is simply an institutionalization of workers organizing in their own behalf.

Once upon a time unions were ILLEGAL. It did not prevent labor organizers from organizing nor workers from going off work. Disobeying the law was how unions were created. There are a lot of maimed and dead workers in the history of labor organizing -- and I don't remember very many industrial barons giving their lives to battle the unions.

Now clearly the political times in which we live make organizing and withoholding not only more difficult, but probably a bad strategies (at least the striking part). But we should never unestimate the power we hold and be ready to use it if we ever perceive that public sentiment will stand behind withholding our services. Failing to go into the classroom has been successfully portrayed ipso facto as a betrayl of students. It isn't if you come to believe that the only alternative is a system that, if continued, will ultimately hurt students worse than the short term effects of a labor action.

The old unions worked because the sentiments of the public eventually found the cause of the blue collar worker to be stronger than the cause of the bosses. But it was easier in those times to demonstrate the abuses of the bosses and the class differences were also much more visible.