Advocate Online

A faculty senate determines academic programs, grants degrees, and is the academic voice of the faculty. It operates under a shared governance model, which implies ownership of academic programs. Thus, senators have the welfare of the academy as their major guiding principle.

A faculty union is a group of workers striving for a fair wage and decent working conditions. A union sits at the bargaining table across from the administration, concerned with the welfare of its members. The union reviews mind-boggling statistics, and negotiates a contract. This presumes a corporate model of the University, a necessary evil when negotiating.

Senate and union issues often reside in different domains. But it is inevitable that some issues will be problematic. For example: In some situations, firing a professor may be the right solution for the academy, but the existence of a union-negotiated due process procedure may discourage the administration from acting.

Another example: The excessive use of part-time faculty has economic benefits, including the preservation of a healthy salary pool for the full-timers. But it is not clear whether the academy benefits from this strategy, not to mention the personal costs to the part-timers. One final example of potential conflict: “Market-driven” faculty salaries may be necessary for the development of high-demand programs. But are these salaries fair when humanities professors’ salaries are so low?

Faculty may be able to find a compromise between the values of the academy and the economics of the corporation. But given the budgetary crises that many states are currently facing, the compromises will not be easy to find.

* Bill Wozniak is professor of psychology and director of general studies at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He has served as chief negotiator for the University of Nebraska Education Association and has served twice as president of the UNK Faculty Senate.

No, our faculty refuses to allow conflict between the senate and the union to weaken our voice.
Mary Ann Pacheco *

The faculty at Rio Hondo College decided long ago that a strong faculty senate and a strong faculty union, working together, made the faculty, as a whole, a formidable and indomitable force.

In the course of my academic career, I have served both as president of my college faculty union, the Rio Hondo College Faculty Association (RHCFA) and my college academic senate, though not both at the same time.

In my first term as Association president, the faculty went out on strike, and the president of the Academic Senate joined me in urging our Board of Trustees to reach a contract settlement immediately. In my term as academic senate president, the college faced a fiscal crisis, and the Association president worked with me to find ways avert a total financial catastrophe and preserve faculty jobs and benefits.

When the state of California mandated peer review, the Academic Senate and Faculty Association formed a joint committee to develop the procedures that were then incorporated into our contract. The members of the senate don’t hesitate to refer items to the Faculty Association and, in fact, will refuse to discuss them if they fall within the scope of bargaining.

Similarly, the RHCFA membership will refer items to the senate or request joint committees when they fall within the scope of “professional and academic matters”—the purview of the Academic Senate as defined by state law—and the collective bargaining agreement.

At Rio Hondo College, the faculty may have the ability to speak via two different channels, but it still speaks with the one voice.

* Mary Ann Pacheco has taught English at Rio Hondo College in California for 27 years. She also has served as president of her local and of the California Community College Association, and has served on the Boards of Directors of the California Teachers Association and NEA.