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Section: April 1998
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NEA Affilitates in Action
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The Dialogue
Thriving in Academe
| DialogueQuestion: Should Congress exempt colleges and universities from the Older Worker Benefits Protection Act and allow them to offer early retirement incentive programs, based on age, to their faculties? | |
Yes, there should be incentives
for faculty to retire early.by John Kingston* Congress should exempt universities and colleges from the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act so they can offer age-capped incentives for early retirement. This would be one way to quickly open up a large number of positions that could be filled by younger, more vital faculty. I assume that those retiring early have either lost their zest for teaching and research or wish to exert themselves elsewhere, not that anyone of a certain age is no longer vital. Without an age cap, the pace of retirements will be too slow and the necessary turnover delayed. Age-capped early retirement offers a graceful means to exchange a tired, tenured professor for an energized, typically untenured professor. Early retirement incentive schemes can, of course, be dangerous when used by administrators simply to cut costs. But if such schemes are linked to a guarantee that those retiring will be replaced by tenure-earning faculty, then they can become a means of sustaining the work of the retiring faculty members with a younger faculty. The argument that age caps deny older workers a benefit offered to younger workers can be addressed simply by grandfathering in those faculty older than the cap when the incentive is offered and giving them a chance to take it up. Their numbers should not be large, so covering them would not be costly---and every faculty member will have been offered the opportunity to choose the benefit or not. |
 No,
there is no inherent senate-union conflict.by Trudy Carpenter* Both senate and union forums can advance student learning and respond to faculty concerns---when the faculty senate is composed only of faculty, and a strong local union is in place.  Before we unionized in 1969,
our college president appointed faculty as well as administrators to the senate,
which was chaired by an administrator.Today, our faculty senate is
composed only of faculty, chosen by their own academic departments, and is
governed only by faculty---in fact, the same officers who lead our Association.
That's the good news.The bad news is that the
administration took back the power to make many critical decisions when the
faculty senate became truly a faculty body. Unfortunately, this means that we
now have very little control over academic decisions on our campus, except what
we have been able to negotiate in the contract.Without the authority to make
key academic decisions, faculty, both inside and outside the senate, can find
themselves in the realm of "virtual power," where they are constantly
invited to give input but lack the actual power to propel decisions into
implementation.How do
we end conflict between senate and faculty? We need to negotiate academic
decision making into our Association contracts and more closely coordinate the
work of faculty unions and senates. |
|
* John Kingston, an associate professor of linguistics, is vice-president of the Massachusetts Society of Professors. |
*Brenda Brown, a math professor, is an executive board member of the University of the District of Columbia Faculty Association. |
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