4A
Monday, April 17, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: CTA UNIONIZATION VOTE
GTAs look for unified voice
Many of the graduate teaching assistants on this campus believe they need a stronger, more unified voice to speak to the administration and to the legislature.
The administration, in turn, believes that a union will divide the University, hindering chances to compete for dwindling higher education dollars from the legislature. Next year alone, $2.9 million is getting cut from the budget.
Who's right? Who knows?
The debate over GTA unionization, at least as it would apply on this campus, consists mainly of speculation.
There are representatives from certain universities who say it works and those who say it creates a logjam in negotiation procedures.
However, the truth of the matter is that GTAs are not faculty. Though they instruct and usually spend
GTAs will vote on a union today and tomorrow. But will unionization help solve problems or divide the University?
more than the contract-dictated 20 hours a week working and grading papers, GTAs are learning too. Being a teaching assistant is not a career. Yet GTAs wish to pursue certain benefits that would put them on the same level as faculty.
The administration has achieved 100 percent fee reimbursement for GTAs. Not a bad deal.And how many part-time employees can you think of who have any sort of health coverage?
Those voicing support of a union say it will simplify negotiations. But if unionization passes the vote, the controversies, here at KU and in Topeka, may get much worse.
MATT GOWEN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
FROM THE CHANCELLOR
GTAs should not unionize
On April 17 and 18, a historic election will occur. At issue is whether graduate teaching assistants at the University of Kansas will choose the Kansas Association of Public
Employees as their exclusive bargaining representative or will remain unaffiliated with a union.
I urge all eligible GTAs to vote.
I sympathize with the difficult financial circumstances in which many GTAs find themselves. Many of us on the faculty have been GTAs, yet I don't believe that forming a union will help. Some of my reasons follow.
Faculty members at Pittsburg State University organized in the 1980s. Since that time, their investment in the union has reaped no better salary and fringe benefit improvements than faculty at nonunion Regents institutions in Kansas.
Over the years, I and my fellow administrators have been the committed advocates of GTAs in the Kansas legislature. That commitment shows in the fact that the GTAs compensation package was more than 100 percent of the packages of their counterparts at peer schools in 1994.
We have vigorously pursued a 100 percent remission of GTA tuition payments, making it a priority among our budget requests to the Legislature for more than a decade. In the late 1970s, there was no tuition relief; as of 1993, it was 100 percent. The remission means that a GTA with a 40 percent appointment enrolled in more than six hours saves in excess of $2,500 over two semesters.
Historically, we have listened to GTA concerns. That will continue. We know that health benefits are a priority for them. Change has been painfully slow, yet we believe that a unified presence before the Kansas Legislature is important. A union, as a third party in negotiations, would fragment our position.
Personally, I have one other fear about the meaning of a union for our campus. The ties that now exist between faculty and GTAs are more informal and flexible than they would be if relationships between the groups were governed by collective bargaining restrictions. Mentoring and collegiality could suffer.
I hope that all GTAs will consider these thoughts when they make their choices today and tomorrow. Voting today will be in the lobby of Strong Hall and tomorrow in the lobby of the Computer Services Facility.
Del Shankel Chancellor
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
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CATHERINE ELLEWORTH
Technology coordinator
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JENNIFER PERRIER
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MARK MASTRO
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JAY STEINER
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Colleen McCain
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Robert Tapley / KANSAN
GTA unionization debate
Unionization is harmful in the modern, postindustrial age
Dante's first line of his *Commedia*
is "in the middle of the road of my
life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost."
This description could easily describe the relationship between the administration and those of our GTA colleagues who seek to unionize. Before I came to KU as Direct
of Human Resources, I worked for a college in the Northeast at which every employee group was unionized. Every three years each contract would expire and both sides would enter into a dance of posturing, of asking for more than could ever be afforded, of seeking concessions that should never be made. After months of rancorous debate, minor changes would be made in the collective bargaining agreement, which to the untrained eye would be invisible. The new contract would be microscopically changed from the prior agreement. Both parties, exhausted, would claim victory and spend two years trying to heal the wounds wrought by a battle fought over so little. It was a depressing ritual, whose spoils were a "lose-lose" for the entire community.
The process was not in the best interests of our students, of morale, of the institution or of the employees.
The way out of our disagreements, through ratification of the agreement, only created fertile soil for a future adversarial relationship. And on the outside, the enemies of
higher education winked at each other in glee as they watched us battle over our already slim resources.
I believe we have enough third parties trying to control our destiny; adding a union only would bring another third party, with its own intrusive agenda that would impede our ability to reasonably and intelligently work together for the benefit of the entire institution.
Unionization is not compatible with the paradigm shift from the post-industrial age to the information age. It immobilizes us; it robots us of our ability to press for generative change; it creates false power relationships when coalitions and alliances will enable us to visualize and create our own future. To be sure, there is a balance between the two ends of the creative spectrum: security in the form of money, power and benefits and creative engagement with the world through passion and innovation. Unionization chooses the formalization of relationships dictated by endless articles and sections governing every term and condition of employment. Innovation is destroyed by a rigid rule book that governs us against our will and is antithetical to the creative seeds that the academy must propagate. The very viability of our tumultuous world demands it. If we fail to nourish creativity, innovation, experimentation and interpersonal resolution of conflict within the academy, where we will nourish it?
rights, witnesses, shop stewards and Public Employees Relations Board hearings, or we can work our way out of the dilemma we have created.
We can mire ourselves in the intricacies of the four-step grievance process, appeals, management
As a seasoned labor-relations specialist, I assure you that whatever the outcome of the election, I will work with the GTAs and administration to seek that balance point between security and innovation.
Like Dante, we must find ourselves and our way through the dark wood. Together, we must generate a path that will enable us to lead rather than to follow, to educate rather than be victimized. But I also know that the brightest future for us all will be found through the unhampered ability to mold our destiny. If we unionize we will merely enter the past through another door.
I urge you to vote no on GTA unionization.
Marc Adin is the Director of Human Resources.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Unionization gives GTAs more power
As faculty union leaders who engage in collective bargaining at Johnson County Community College and Kansas City Kansas Community College, we support the efforts of KU's graduate teaching assistants to form a union.
Some KU vice chancellors wrote all GTAs recently to dissuade them from organizing.
While the GTAs are affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, and we are affiliated with the Kansas National Education Association, the point is that GTAs will continue to represent themselves, just as we do in negotiations on our campuses. Our experience has demonstrated to us that collegiality increased when we got organized. GTAs rightly point out that collective bargaining provides individuals with the opportunity to determine democratically for themselves the issues they wish to pursue in negotiations and to work effectively toward realizing shared aims with a degree of power no individual enjoys alone. Forming legally recognized organizations of professional employees has been our key to getting important changes implemented on issues affecting equity, morale, and academic effectiveness. We urge everyone to support a pro-innovation vote!
Stuart Shafer. President
Faculty Association, JCCC
■ Jim Divney, KU Ph.D.
Faculty Assoc. Vice President
■ Steve Collins, KU Ph.D.
Former Membership Chair
Faculty Assn, KCKC
■ Steve Spavey, KU Ph.D.
Former Negotiations Committee
Faculty Assn, KCKC
■ Morteza Ardebili, KU Ph.D.
Former Negotiations Chair
Faculty Assn, KCKC
■ Valdenia Winn, KU Ph.D
Exec. Council Representative
Faculty Association KCKCC
■ Janice McIntyre, Ph.D.
Faculty Assn. Vice Presi-
Union would cause labeling, contempt
KCKCC
I'm at breakfast with my professor friend. We're talking about the GTA union. She's for it. I'm against it. We lodge the by-now familiar arguments for these positions.
Then something happens that hurts. She says I've been "coopted." I feel labeled. I start to go off on her. She probably winds up feeling labeled. We don't talk about it. I believe this is what a union would mean here: people trapped in roles, blaming, dissing, at each other's throats. It will be yet another mechanism for organizing and solidifying contempt between groups.
Roger Martin
Lawrence GTA
Story about Hilltop had incorrect facts
The April 11 Kansan article concerning Hilltop's future contained incorrect information.
Student Senate has been an advocate for child care since 1972, and its goal to expand child care services on the KU campus is commendable. In Hilltop's early years, Senate funded building rental, renovation costs and some equipment. For the past 15 years it has not contributed to Hilltop's operating costs. Hilltop does not receive Senate funds—$13 per KU student —for its operating costs. Operating costs are paid from user fees; the building and maintenance costs are covered by the Unver-
Senate funds allocated to Hilltop are for a few student hourly positions — a payroll total of $16,000 for this fiscal year. However, this $16,000 does not reduce Hilltop's operating costs.
The funds are used to award scholarships to eligible KU student families with children enrolled in Hilltop. Hilltop has provided quality child care for KU families since 1972 and has every expectation of continuing its major role in child care at the University of Kansas.
Martha Langley Hilltop Child Development Center
Unionization would help GTAs secure better health benefits
Regarding GTA unionization and
GTA health benefits, the administration has claimed that unionization would not put GTAs in a better position to secure health benefits because any such benefits must be approved in Topeka. This is false and misleading.
Many GTAs cur.
Many GTAS currently purchase the health insurance selected by the Student Senate and made available to KU students. The policy costs about $60 per month and requires students to visit Watkins as their primary provider.
Because of their teaching loads, most graduate students who teach enroll in less than seven hours. Because they are not full-time students, they pay an extra $12 per semester fee not paid by full-time graduate students. The student policy is not great, but it is better than nothing.
The important point, however, is that the policy is not part of any state employee benefit plan. There is absolutely nothing to stop the administration from making this policy available for free to all GTAs as part of their compensation. Indeed, this has been proposed to administrators in years past, but no progress has been made. GTA unionization would clearly put GTAs in a better position to secure such a long overdue benefit.
Now, it is true that if GTAs are ultimately to enjoy the same state-provided health benefits as faculty, as do GTAs at other universities with GTA collective bargaining, the state must approve distribution of those benefits to GTAs. Note that the approval process is a political one. GTAs have no voice in that process, except the voice of administrators.
Collective bargaining and affiliation with KAPE/AFT offers GTAs a chance to make their own collective voice heard in Topeka and to add to their voice the voice of one of the largest and most effective lobbying groups in Topeka.
To have a real shot at securing the same health benefits as faculty, KU GTAs must make their collective voice heard in Topeka and then work with KAPE and KU administrators to see that the political process yields the right result. GTA unionization carries no guarantees, but it certainly offers more hope than the status quo.
GTA unionization offers two advantages over the status quo when it comes to health benefits.
First, it puts GTAs in a good position to secure as part of their compensation at least the minimal coverage provided by the general student health insurance policy made available through Senate. Second, it puts GTAs in the best position, as faculty, to secure safe health benefits through the political process.
GTAs should ask faculty and administrators who suggest that GTA unionization is a bad idea whether they receive health benefits as part of their compensation as KU employees.
Christina Sharp is a Lawrence graduate student and a Western Chilliation GTA
MIXED MEDIA
By Jack Ohman