What Does Collective Bargaining Mean to Me?
At most universities, the university administration (and the trustees or other governing board) have almost total legal authority to set rules and practices. However, in Florida, faculty have won the right to bargain collectively, carving out important exceptions to the administration's power in the areas of "wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment."
Collective bargaining is a concerted form of democratic problem solving, in which the solution has to be agreed to by both the faculty and the administration. Representatives of both parties keep exchanging proposals until they reach a mutually satisfactory solution, cast in the form of a contract. The faculty and the trustees then each vote on whether to accept the contract their representatives have negotiated, which becomes legally binding if approved.
One way to understand what collective bargaining means is to compare what the law requires under collective bargaining to what the law permits where faculty don't have collective bargaining.
WHY IS A CONTRACT BETTER?
The courts and governmental labor boards have generally treated university constitutions, bylaws, and other formal rules as nothing more than a business corporation's internal policy documents, which do not have the status of law. This means university administrations are legally entitled to change their procedures at will, or even ignore them altogether, as long as their actions do not violate state or federal law. In short, without collective bargaining, if the administration finds it inconvenient to abide by the commitments it has made to faculty, it can legally renege on them.
On the other hand, collective bargaining contracts have the status of binding laws. And they supersede any provision of a University's constitution, bylaws, or other rule, regulation, or procedure. Thus, while university administrations have the right to change or violate their own rules, they must honor collective bargaining contracts or face penalties under law.
WHO CALLS THE SHOTS?
Without collective bargaining, the administration may consult with the faculty, and the faculty may even pass formal resolutions, but final authority always remains with the administration. The administration can take any lawful action it wants, even over the faculty's opposition. For that matter, of course, the university administration is not legally obligated to consult faculty at all.
On the other hand, under collective bargaining, when the administration wants to change working conditions, there is no way to avoid going to the faculty and addressing their concerns. The administration cannot legally change policies affecting faculty working conditions until it reaches formal agreement with the faculty's certified bargaining agent ‹ or goes through the lengthy statutory process to resolve a formally declared impasse.
WHO SETTLES DISPUTES?
Here is perhaps the most obvious and fundamental difference. Without collective bargaining, in any dispute over administrative actions, the administration gets to be the judge as well as the defendant, making the final decision about whether it needs to rectify its actions. However, under collective bargaining, a neutral third party is the judge and makes the final decision, which is binding on everyone.
In the current political climate, university administrations are facing greater outside interference than ever before, and, as a result, in many places traditional faculty rights and protections are being eroded at an alarming pace. Collective bargaining has proven to be one reliable way faculty can retain a measure of control over their professional lives.
Sincerely,
Connie Shehan, President
United Faculty of Florida
238 Norman Hall, PO Box 117055
Phone: 392-0274
Email: president@uff-uf.org
