Alternatives to the “Water Bug Mentality” in Campus Employment Relations: An Appreciative Response to Professor Hetenyi

17 ALTERNATIVES TO THE "WATER BUG MENTALITY" IN CAMPUS EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS: AN APPRECIATIVE RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR HETENYI Terrence N. Tice* Introduction Historically, legal and institutional provisions for collective bargaining have been established for two primary reasons: to secure labor peace and to improve decision-making regarding wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment. In appearance, Prof. Hetenyi's discussion has concentrated on the first: labor peace. Thus, he appropriately emphasizes faculty discontent concerning wages, job security and working conditions, and he finds reason for hoping that the current widespread tension, emotionalism and disruption of the educational atmosphere that he sees with the advent of faculty bargaining will dimini sh. Yet he anticipates this resolution with more than a touch of unease about the future. In every respect, moreover, the "dilemma" he sets forth irrevocably points up current needs for better modes of decision-making in employment relations: the second historical reason for providing collective bargaining. It is no wonder that he feels uneasy, since he believes that unionization will generally be needed in order to treat the conditions of faculty discontent, that unionization entails the supplanting of freer traditional styles with more confining and rigidifying styles, and that "there is rto escape from painful choices, no chance to embrace the best of both worlds." While I agree that we cannot escape painful choices, I do not accept either horn of the dilemma he describes. Most of the debate on academic bargaining over the past ten years has either presupposed or implied this ^Associate Professor of Philosophy, School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 18 dilemma. Thus, Prof. Hetenyi has correctly read the debate, and I am grateful for his insight. I believe, however, that much more is to be said about the reality behind the debate. The real condition of campus employment relations today, I contend, has been significantly obscured by the debate, which I think has dragged along much needless impedimenta, some of which I will try to sort out here. In one brief essay I can only depict a few features of what I take to be a considerable confusion of issues within the debate to which Prof. Hetenyi is party; indeed, I do not presume to see them all clearly myself. The chief aim of the essay, moreover, is not simply to point out aspects of the debate that Prof. Hetenyi and others may have overlooked but, more important, to enact part of an ongoing dialogue, or rather miltilogue, on the future prospects of academic employment relations. I hope that in this way readers will be able to make better use of both essays for purposes of reflection and decision-making. My own emphasis here, moreover, will be on the needs and requirements of decision-making rather than upon modes of obtaining labor peace, with the assumptions that both are important and that they are inseparable. Some Real Conditions: Unionization on Campus First, consider some facts about unionization on campus and some related challenges. (l) Unionization of faculty continues at a steady pace. This occurs despite the lack of enabling legislation in twenty-six states (mostly in the South and West) and despite the reluctance of both faculty and administration in all but a few private institutions to have the National Labor Relations Board enter into their affairs. Only the growth of faculty unionization has been carefully followed by scholars, not that of non-faculty groups in academia. In my study of "The 19 Situation in the States" as of May 1976,1 I listed 298 faculty bargaining units in 522 campuses and institutions, an estimated 19-8 percent of all campuses and institutions as compared with approximately 11.8 percent in 1973- As of early March 1977, my records show 329 units on 560 campuses and institutions, a ten-month growth of 31 and 38 respectively, only 6 of the new units being in private colleges. Few additional elections were *» > expected before the end of the academic year. The calendar in 1976 was a banner year, largely because 5,^00 faculty entered collective bargaining in the Florida state university system, 1,800 in the five-campus Illinois Board of Governors System of regional universities...