Faculty unions say strike ban for Ohio college employees would create power imbalance

Sheridan Hendrix
The Columbus Dispatch

While legislators say a proposed higher education bill that could prohibit faculty from striking during contract negotiations is about fairness, union members say the result would be the exact opposite.

Senate Bill 83, also known as the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, would overhaul campus life at Ohio’s 14 public universities and 23 community colleges. Included in a long list of possible changes is a plan to bar campus employees from striking when negotiating their contracts with administration.

The bill would add faculty to the list of public employees who aren’t allowed to strike in Ohio, which includes first responders and corrections officers.

Ohio Senate Bill 83:Overhaul of Ohio colleges targets diversity mandates, China and requires U.S. history class

Senate Workforce and Higher Education Committee Chair Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, told The Dispatch last week that this facet of the bill is about being fair to students.

“Students pay for their instruction upfront at the beginning of a semester,” Cirino said. “That’s a contract between the student and the state, and nothing should stand in the way of those students getting the instruction they paid for.”

But faculty at those unions say the bill would only further the chasm between employees and administrators, creating inequity and a power imbalance on campus.

“The right to strike is paramount,” said Tom Shanahan, a legal studies professor at Columbus State Community College and immediate past president of the Columbus State Educators Association.

Shanahan, who led Columbus State’s faculty union for six years, said taking away a union’s right to strike removes one of the biggest tools it has during the bargaining process.

“Taking away strikes takes away any leverage faculty have and gives all the leverage to the administration,” Shanahan said.

“If there is no right to strike, it incentivizes administrators to dig in their heels,” he said. “What incentive do they have to negotiate in good faith?”

David Jackson, president of Bowling Green State University’s faculty union and a political science professor, said SB 83 is a “comprehensive radical restructuring of higher education in one bill.” But, he said, it’s also far reaching for the wrong reasons.

“It’s a classic solution in search of a problem,” Jackson said.

Strikes involving campus faculty have been on the rise nationwide, with work stoppages hitting a 20-year peak in 2022, according to Bloomberg Law. In Ohio, though, faculty strikes are more rare.

Faculty at Wright State University, near Dayton, went on strike for about three weeks in January 2019 over health care and pay disputes. And Youngstown State University workers went on strike in 2020 over pay disputes.

At Bowling Green, Jackson said the union’s past two contract negotiations went well, using interest-based bargaining. While striking is not an oft-used tool among Ohio faculty unions, it’s still a vital one to have when mediation fails, he said.

“The autonomy we’ve been given thus far has been working. We should be allowed to work without being micromanaged by the state,” Jackson said.

Steve Mockabee, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and communications and political engagement chair of UC’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said the university’s faculty union is “vehemently opposed” to SB 83’s prohibition of striking.

“The right to strike is critical to the balancing of economic power between workers and employers — especially those as large as many of Ohio’s public universities, which are often the largest employers in their base cities,” Mockabee said. “Without the leverage that the possibility of a strike provides, collective bargaining is reduced to collective begging.”

Mockabee said the proposal eliminates “a fundamental right of workers, and there is no reason to think they will stop with college employees.” He expects that SB 83 will be opposed by union organizers across Ohio.

Even public schools without faculty unions are talking about the proposed ban.

Pranav Jani, an associate professor of English at Ohio State University and president of it’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said SB 83’s strike ban hasn’t deterred faculty from an interest in organizing. Rather, it’s sparked more conversation.

“If anything, it’s gotten more people asking, ‘Why the issue of strike? What about faculty power are they so afraid of?'” Jani said. “They’re showing their cards.”

Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for her Mobile Newsroom newsletter here and Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here.

shendrix@dispatch.com

@sheridan120

Republicans set their sights on control of higher education in Ohio

91.7 WVXU | By Howard Wilkinson

Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly are an odd bunch.

 

Long ago, most of us were taught in high school civics classes that the Republicans were the party of limited government interference with people’s lives; the “hands off” party, as opposed to the “hands on” Democratic Party.

We have since been made aware that was a load of hooey.

Such Republicans do not exist in the Ohio Statehouse, at least.

With their veto-proof “supermajority” in both the House and Senate, they can pretty much do as they please. Who’s going to stop them? The governor? Yeah, right. That’s a joke, friends. Bazinga, as Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say.

Within the last few years, Republicans in the legislature have done power grabs with legislation to take over how elections in Ohio are conducted; take away reproductive rightscreate district maps that allow legislators to choose their own voters instead of the other way around; do the bidding of gun lobbyists; and strip the state board of education of any control over K-12 education and giving it to the governor.

And apparently, they’re not done yet.

Along comes State Sen. Jerry Cirino with his Senate Bill 83, a set of sweeping do’s and don’ts for Ohio’s universities and colleges, including some private ones, which he calls “a course correction” from what he sees as a slippery slope to a “woke-based” higher education system in Ohio.

ANALYSIS: Ohio GOP launches a power grab over public education. They’re likely to succeed

Opponents of Cirino’s bill call it an “over-reach” that would do “irreparable harm” to a fully functioning and well-respected system of higher education in Ohio.

“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP Ohio). “I really don’t know why the senator is trying to pick this fight.”

Cirino is an amiable fellow who grew up in Cleveland’s Little Italy but has made a home for himself and his family in Lake County, a comfortable suburban community just east of Cleveland.

jerry c cirino

“I was the first in my family to go to college,” Cirino told me. “I have personally seen what it has done for my family. Higher education has always been my top priority.”

Senate Bill 83, he said, “is about quality education. I hear a lot of talk about indoctrination in some of our college courses. The idea that you have to think certain things and certain ways. Students may have to attest to certain beliefs in order to succeed.

“What I am interested in is intellectual diversity.”

So what does Cirino — along with the seven fellow Republicans who co-sponsored his bill — want to do?

A lot.

He made it clear to me that he could have split this into several separate bills but decided to “shoot the moon” with the whole package.

Here are some of the things Senate Bill 83 would ban:

  • requiring diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) training for students and faculty. Cirino says Ohio State University has 99 people running DEI programs. “I don’t know why we need this,” Cirino said. “What is this training for?”
  • strikes by employees, including the faculty.
  • “bias” in classrooms, with no hint of what the state would consider “bias.”
  • forbidding programs that partnered with the People’s Republic of China, “our enemy.”

Here’s what the bill would require:

  • That every student take an American history course, with a syllabus set out in the bill
  • Public syllabuses and teacher information online
  • Professors would face tenure evaluations based on if the educator showed bias or taught with bias — including student evaluations
  • That educators teach so students can reach their “own conclusions.”

The banning of DEI training is particularly hard to explain.

When pressed on whether or not DEI training is a requirement for graduation in any Ohio college or university, Cirino admitted that it is not.

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“There are apparently some medical schools around the country who have that requirement,” Cirino said.

But not in Ohio.

One of his objections to DEI training is that “it can pit one race against another.”

On a personal note, I have had DEI training at my place of employment. In my experience, it brought people together rather than push them apart.

From the point of view of AAUP Ohio, the most egregious part of Senate Bill 83 is the ban on strikes by unions at universities.

“Students pay up front for a semester in college,” Cirino said. “Why should students be used as pawns in union negotiations?”

The AAUP’s Kilpatrick believes that shows a complete lack of understanding of how labor negotiations work.

“The collective bargaining process works,” Kilpatrick said. “Strikes at universities are very rare.”

When it does happen, though, Kilpatrick said, there is no reason to blame the unions.

“When a strike happens, that is a failure of management to bargain in good faith,” Kilpatrick said. “That’s not the fault of the workers.”

Given the track record of the GOP supermajority in the legislature, Cirino believes he can get this bill through the Senate and the House and signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine.

“I think there is broad support for this,” Cirino said. “I’ve had some people tell me they want to go further. I’ve never thought of myself as a moderate.”

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He said he hopes some Democrats in the legislature sign on to this bill. If I were him, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen. And the fact is, he doesn’t need them.

“This bill has a lot of things that are going to inflame the opposition,” Cirino said.

Inflaming the opposition has never stopped statehouse Republicans before. Hard to imagine it will now.

Save the date!

AAUP-UC will be hosting a SUDS and SOLIDARITY! There will be free drinks, a taco bar, live entertainment, and more! Attend and bring a UC faculty member with you! The event will be at the Fermentorium at Nine Giants (6111 Ridge Avenue, 45213 in Pleasant Ridge) from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on April 27th!

Click here to RSVP:  https://form.jotform.com/230745497990066

Our Colleagues at Miami University Need Our Help

Our colleagues at Miami University are deep into the process of organizing their faculty and librarians with the goal of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). They currently have a very active advocacy Chapter, but this a CBA would be an important step for them and for higher education collective bargaining in general.

The Miami administration is opposed to their efforts and is using unscrupulous tactics to block their organizing campaign. Their latest effort is to argue that librarians should not be part of the bargaining unit. Librarians would not be able to vote for a CBA or enjoy its benefits. This is a feeble argument. Note that the Librarians at UC have always been part of the bargaining unit.

 

Here is a request from the Faculty Alliance at Miami. Please take a moment to read and participate:

Dear AAUP-UC,

I hope this finds you well! I am writing with an update on Faculty Alliance of Miami’s efforts and a request. We are grateful for your ongoing support and solidarity. We are now in the run-up to a hearing that will determine our bargaining unit. Although a supermajority of workers signed union cards, Miami University leadership has decided to delay the election and contest who should be in the unit, excluding NTT faculty and librarians. Ally support could make a big difference right now. We are asking local and national allies to sign this petition calling on Miami University leadership to let us vote and to listen to Miami’s faculty, librarians and teaching/research staff on who should be in the union.

Right now we are hoping to collect some preliminary signatures before making a big push on social media the week of December 5th. We would love to have your individual signature as an ally, and we’d also welcome your help in seeking signatures from the UC AAUP chapter and any other networks you are able to reach out to. If you have a moment to sign now and share internally, we would really appreciate it. And, if you are willing to help us share the petition on social media on December 5th, please let us know and we will be sure to send you a reminder and some sample language to use.

In solidarity, Cathy

Faculty Alliance of Miami

linktr.ee/famiamioh

Be Watchful, Be Present, Be Active:

Lessons from UC Students about the Impact of Hate on a Campus Community

 

At Monday’s Executive Council meeting, we had a long and meaningful conversation about the November 4 News Record article titled “Racist letter sparks conversations about hate crimes at UC,” where Logan Johnson, the graduate student trustee for the UC Board of Trustees, spoke out through her social media about the anonymous letter her doctoral advisor received in early October—ostensibly in response to an article he had published in Inside Higher Ed about how “discourses and policies around academic integrity are not race-neutral” (para. 10). The anonymous letter he received months later expressed “vehemently racist and genocidal views” (TNR, para. 1), which is putting it mildly.

Logan’s is an honest and rightfully upsetting account. She posted: “I’ve struggled with what it means to be a Black scholar. The pursuit of knowledge is valuable,” she writes, “yet Black scholars and thus their scholarly work are rarely protected. […] Now, I watch as my advisor endures the same treatment with the same type of follow-through from the institution. […] Institutions send emails condemning the behavior,” Logan observes, “which does nothing for Black scholars” (para. 3).

It is not lost on the readers of this News Record article that as of November 4, the date of its publication, the only group to respond with a public statement about this incident was UC’s Student Government … on Instagram.

I’ve heard that President Pinto addressed this issue at the last Faculty Senate meeting, and I know that both Provost Ferme and VP Marshall have posted letters on the Office of the Provost’s webpage and the Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Impact’s webpage, respectively, on or about November 5. I know, too, that the Provost’s letter ended with an invitation: “We are in the process,” he writes, “of developing a guide for dealing with hate mail. If you would like to contribute to its creation, please sign up by November 14 and we will notify you of the meeting date.”

I signed up.

My point here is not to bash. The words, either written or spoken, from the President, from the Provost, from VP of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Impact matter. And I appreciate their words quite sincerely, as I’m betting others in our campus community do as well.

They hit all the right notes—condemning the racist actions of the anonymous letter-writer; affirming the values of our campus community: inclusion, tolerance, mutual respect; and expressing support for all those affected by this outrageous hateful incident.

Again, my point here is not to bash.

My point here is to notice. Which is, in part, what I think Logan is asking me to do. To stand alongside her watching while she watches, disappointedly and again, how not to support Black scholars.

As I was piecing together information about what happened, I came across this clip from WLWT news. I’d like to take a few minutes to show it here if the technology cooperates.

https://www.wlwt.com/article/university-of-cincinnati-students-discussion-racist-letter-sent-to-faculty-member/41918237#

What I noticed after watching this news clip, which aired on November 10—and what I’m sure you all noticed, too—was the stark contrast between the administration’s response to this racist letter and the impact it’s having on our UC community and the students’ response to this same incident, and this same impact.

Plainly put, while the administration is talking, students are organizing.

They’re rallying.

They’re acting.

And, of course, they’re watching. They’re watching to see what we do.

The Executive Council is holding a retreat on December 2 and this issue will be on our agenda. Colleges and universities across this country have been experiencing an uptick in hate crimes for at least the past 5 years. No campus is immune. All institutions of higher education need leaders who will protect faculty, protect students, protect staff from racist, sexist, xenophobic or any manner of other hate-driven attacks. The AAUP has long encouraged administrators to support, in concrete ways, all those who use their voices and their talents to speak out against injustice, exclusion, and inequity, especially those who are harassed as a result of their efforts to address these problems.

Be watchful, be present, be active. These are the lessons I take from those UC students who rallied last week and from Logan who spoke out the week before.

As the students have shown us, we have work to do.

In solidarity,

Connie Kendall Theado

President, AAUP-UC

 

Works Cited

 

Pope, Z. (November 4, 2022). Racist letter sparks conversations about hate crimes at UC.

https://www.newsrecord.org/news/racist-letter-sparks-conversations-about-hate-crimes-at-uc/article_a07f494a-5c92-11ed-a4e6-c359d6f32e30.html

 

Tichavakunda, A. (June 30, 2022). Let’s talk about race and academic integrity.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-integrity-issues-are-not-race-neutral-opinion