LABOR
PAINS
The path to unionization at UO
BY
D AV I D K . B A E Z
T
o AFT organizers, it must have felt as if their
ears were burning. For most of its nearly 100-
year history, the union had focused on K-12
schools, but more recently it had begun to
organize higher-ed institutions. It had had suc-
cess teaming with the American Association of Univer-
sity Professors (AAUP), which is less a union than an
academic standards and practices commission, to orga-
nize faculty at the Universities of Alaska and Vermont,
and ever since then the two had been looking for
another major research university to jointly work with.
UO was especially attractive because of its location: If
they could establish a union here, it would give them a
“high-research” school in the Pacific Northwest, where
their presence was slight in comparison to other regions
of the country. (All the public universities in the state
except Portland State and Oregon State now have fac-
ulty unions, but UO is the only one of those universities
considered a top research institution.)
A spirit of revolution stirred on the
UO campus in the spring of 2007.
That’s when a small group of activist professors — led by math’s Marie Vitulli
and political science’s Gordon Lafer — began meeting in vacant classrooms to
discuss starting a faculty union.
The profs had watched with a growing sense of powerlessness for years as the
university reduced their benefits, stuffed reams of cash into athletics as faculty
salaries stagnated and lagged against comparable institutions, and welcomed tides
of low-paid adjuncts to teach an ever-expanding student body while attrition
steadily chipped away at the ranks of tenured professors. The group also had come
to see the University Senate — ostensibly representing the views of faculty — as
having been neutered and co-opted by the administration, leaving faculty with
virtually no say in decisions at the university.
“It was just lip service from the administration,” Vitulli recalls today about
administration’s response to faculty concerns. “Nothing really changed.”
Vitulli and Lafer soon realized that they had nowhere near the time and
resources that would be necessary to move beyond the classroom sessions and
educate and organize a large and diverse body of faculty into a union. So, toward
the end of the year, Vitulli sent an email to the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT), a massive union based in Washington, D.C., and asked if they would help
unionize the UO faculty.
The AFT quickly hired a consulting firm to survey the
campus and feel out the level of support. It determined
that Eugene was a good investment (faculty union
campaigns can cost upward of a million dollars, though
the AFT would not confirm what they have spent here),
and sent reps to talk with Vitulli and Lafer. By 2008, the
AFT and AAUP had signed a contract to jointly organize
the UO faculty into a collective bargaining unit they
named United Academics of the University of Oregon.
Not long after, AFT organizer Dennis Ziemer flew in and
rented out office space above the Red Rooster Barber
Shop on East 13th. Organizers set up huge charts to track
support in schools and departments across campus, and
the fledgling union began to plot its strategy to win over
the critical mass of supporters (50 percent of the proposed
bargaining unit, plus one) needed to be certified by the
state Employment Relations Board and set up the first
collective bargaining agreement between faculty and
administration in the university’s 130-year history.
By 2007, there had already been a number of
attempts to get a faculty union going here, but all those
efforts had flared out. Grad students had unionized, as
had classified employees — but any union sentiment
among professors remained vague and unformed,
abstract. So what was different this time? For one thing,
the march of history.
In 1935, the Wagner Act protected labor’s right to
collectively bargain with management, but for many
years unions were largely a blue-collar phenomenon, the
province of factory hands, electricians, plumbers, coal
miners — folks who got their hands dirty at work and
whose backs and knees went out too young. Elementary
and high school teachers, who often worked under
factory-like conditions, had formed unions, but the Ivy
Towers long remained apart, immune. Professors studied
and chronicled the labor movement, but it didn’t seem to
relate to their situation and working conditions. Compared
with other workers, professors were doing fine — salaries
‘I really hope
that when
the contract
is negotiated
positive
changes will
happen.’
— M ARIE V ITULLI ,
UO MATH PROFESSOR
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
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October 11, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com