STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—By a three-to-one ratio, Pennsylvania State University faculty, from full professors on down through lower ranks in the university’s system, voted on May 14 to unionize with Service Employees Local 668. The unofficial tally was 2,510-847 out of 5,351 eligible voters.
Once the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board certifies the votes, the faculty will discuss and draw up bargaining goals and elect officers and bargainers, and their union, the Penn State Faculty Alliance (PSFA), said in a Q&A it posted after the victory.
“Big shoutout to 5,000 plus Penn State faculty members who just WON their union!” SEIU tweeted after the announcement. “Faculty members across all ranks & departments, tenured & contingent, full-time & part-time, at Penn State University Park & across the Commonwealth Campuses achieved a historic victory. When we fight, we WIN! #UnionsForAll”
The university administration issued a laid-back statement after the outcome. “Penn State remains committed to supporting faculty, maintaining academic excellence, and communicating throughout this process,” its statement said. “The university will continue providing updates and additional resources on the faculty union website as information becomes available.”
“We believe in a just, effectively run university that respects and values all faculty,” the union says on its website. “This is achieved through a strong, democratic, member-led union that gives Penn State faculty members at every campus a much-needed voice and an active role in decision-making.”
“We are unionizing to ensure investment in education and educators. A union lets all faculty members bring the best they have to offer to our students and university community.” Unionizing is also “a clear mandate for change” at the university, the PSFA added.
The union estimated it would take several months for the faculty members to organize elections, survey members on bargaining goals, and elect officers and a bargaining team.
“Bargaining can address wages, benefits, supplemental pay, job security, health and safety in the workplace, and a variety of other issues,” it said. But even before that, if university bosses threaten to discipline a faculty member, the union, at the member’s request, will represent them.
That’s common in labor law nationwide. Unions distribute cards about those “Weingarten Rights” to all members, describing when and how to ask for representation.
One writer to the Q&A revealed the university bosses managed to, at least for this election, declare “a sizable group of faculty members” are “supervisors” who thus couldn’t vote.
The ones barred from voting were in what PSFA called “an overly expansive definition” of supervisor. On an internal university organization chart, the excluded professors supervised postdocs, staff, or other faculty below. The writer wanted to know how to register anyway.
Trying to reshape the voting unit to eliminate union supporters or add union foes is a common tactic in union-management conflicts nationwide before recognition elections.
“We, as PSFA, did not and do not agree with this definition of a supervisor and do not believe it is legally supported. We will fight to include all faculty who are not supervisors or managers in our union,” it said. If university management keeps trying to re-mold the bargaining unit during contract talks, the PSFA will take the case to the state board.
And even before the workers formally are under a contract, Penn State bosses are already changing working conditions on its campuses, another writer said: Closing programs, changing workloads, and transferring faculty from one campus to another. Those “austerity moves” upset the union, too.
“We will demand to bargain over those subjects that are mandatory subjects of bargaining under the Pennsylvania Employe Relations Act” after the state board certifies the union, the Q&A replied.
The Penn State Faculty Association, like other unions that win recognition elections, can’t collect dues until a contract is signed, sealed, and ratified by its members, the union said. People can sign up voluntarily, though. But it has a tentative dues structure of 1.39% of pay with “no additional fees.”
The dues to the Penn State union, like all other union dues nationwide, will help “build a strong organization that fights for faculty needs.” Specifically, the money will fund staff, legal support, office space, and contract bargaining and enforcement costs, but not politics, the union said.
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