Jan. 11, 2001

UVM CHALLENGES ASPECTS OF FACULTY UNION PETITION

By Enrique Corredera

The University of Vermont today challenged some aspects of a petition for representation filed last month with the Vermont Labor Relations Board by United Academics, AAUP/AFT, which is seeking to represent selected members of the UVM faculty.

"My position is clear: I do not believe that unionization will do anything to improve educational quality at UVM, and may serve to hinder our efforts to strengthen Vermont’s University for many years to come," said UVM President Judith Ramaley. "And perhaps most regrettably, if successful, the unionization effort will sharply divide UVM’s faculty into unionized and non-unionized factions, as evidenced by the United Academics petition filed with the Vermont Labor Relations Board."

The University’s response to the union petition makes the following arguments:

• Department chairs should be excluded from this bargaining unit due to their supervisory and/or managerial status under the State Employees Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Board, after extensive hearings in the mid-70s, ruled that the UVM chairs were indeed supervisors, using the identical definition of a supervisor that is in the state act.

• Clinical faculty in schools and colleges other than the College of Medicine should be included in the proposed unit to avoid overfragmentation by splitting college units into unionized and non-unionized faculty.
  
• Visiting faculty do not have an ongoing employment relationship with UVM and should be excluded.
  
• Tenured or tenure-track officers of instruction serving on a terminal contract or terminal appointment at the time of the election should not be eligible to vote.

The University is not challenging the remainder of the proposed unit, including the exclusion of College of Medicine faculty. A 1975 National Labor Relations Board decision to exclude medical faculty from a proposed unit at the time, played a role in the university’s position.

In addition, Dean of Medicine Joseph Warshaw offered this perspective: "I find the union petition very troubling. One of UVM’s great strengths is the close integration of the College of Medicine with the university at large. This is rare in higher education, and was one of the reasons I chose to come here. Medicine faculty are UVM faculty, and I think it is wrong to think otherwise.

"That said, I agree with the University’s decision not to fight this exclusion. Including medical faculty would pose a huge risk to the College of Medicine, which owes much of its success to hiring highly motivated faculty who thrive in an entrepreneurial, merit-based system that rewards quality and individual performance. The UVM College of Medicine would not have achieved what it has under a system that does not value merit and bases its rewards primarily on longevity and seniority. And were the college to be unionized, we would have a very difficult time recruiting outstanding scholars from across the nation and the world to our university. Even though medical faculty will apparently be excluded from the unionization vote, I hope that all faculty eligible to vote will take the time to fully understand what they may be getting into."

Hearings on these issues have not been scheduled as yet but are likely to be held within the next couple of months.