Earlier today, Tuesday, April 14, House Republicans unveiled Substitute House Bill 64, which contained their revisions to the governor’s budget.
Most alarming about the substitute bill were new provisions that would reclassify faculty as managers if they participate in any sort of decision-making at their institutions.
If faculty are managers, then they are not employees, which means they are ineligible to participate in collective bargaining.
The Legislative Service Commission’s comparison document of the executive budget versus the current version explains how the current version would change Ohio Revised Code Section 4117:
–Specifies, for the purposes of Ohio’s Public Employees’ Collective Bargaining Law, that faculty members of state institutions of higher education are considered supervisors or management level employees if they participate in decisions with respect to courses, curriculum, personnel, or other matters of academic or institutional policy.
–Specifies further that faculty members are considered management level employees if they participate in the governance of the institution (either individually or through a faculty senate or like organization), or are involved in personnel decisions, the selection or review of administrators, planning and use of physical resources, budget preparation, and determination of educational polices related to admissions, curriculum, subject matter, and methods of instruction and research.
–Results in either type of faculty members not being eligible to engage in collective bargaining unless the employer elects to do so. (Currently the employer must collectively bargain if the faculty members elect to do so.)
Plain and simple, this is an attempt to eliminate faculty unions at Ohio’s public colleges and universities.
We are working with our allies in the legislature to draft an amendment to remove these “Yeshiva”-like provisions. We likely will be calling upon our members and allies to contact legislators in the very near future, but we wanted to make you aware of this development right away.
Reblogged this on Ohio Labor.
Reblogged this on rennydiokno.com.
This is an alarming attack on the rights of faculty. It’s notable that by this standard of participating in shared governance, all students are considered managerial because they have a student government. The proposed bill does include a provision that colleges can choose to recognize these collective bargaining rights, which is a good reason for colleges to enact policies that protect these rights.
This is abhorrent, and I call on all thinking members of the legislature to block the adoption of this legislation. At the same time, I hope that tenure track faculty will seek a greater depth of solidarity with their so-called “part-time” faculty colleagues who are effectively barred from collective bargaining under existing Ohio law.
It’s high time that more tenured faculty take-up the cause of their contingent colleagues. In case they haven’t recently surveyed the conditions on their campuses, part-time faculty outnumber tenure track faculty nearly three to one.
I am reminded of the timeless reflection of Martin Niemöller:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
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