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A strike in the Pennsylvania system has been brewing for some time. I'll open it up for comments from philosophers who want to share information about the strike.
I am on strike in Pennsylvania. We have been without a contract for 477 days. As with most public institutions of higher education in the US, our funding has been repeatedly and consistently cut by the state legislature. I believe that most Americans no longer consider higher ed to be a public good, but a private one, and therefore something to be purchased solely with private funds. In any case, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), which includes 14 universities, has repeatedly refused to negotiate in good faith. For example, the last three contract negotiations they just drag their heels for the first year after the old contract expires because they think that year is a "gimme"—no raises for anyone. The union has stood strong against the exploitation of adjuncts, with strict caps on the percentage of classes that can be taught by adjuncts, and by including them in the bargaining unit to be paid the same union wages as everyone else. The state naturally wants to pay adjuncts less than regular faculty. They also want significant hikes in health insurance premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket coinsurance. All of that will eat up the raises they are prepared to give.
You might think that none of these items on its own is a deal breaker. However, what I have seen is our death by a thousand cuts. Every contract is just a little bit weaker. It is no joke to say that in many fields that salaraies we can offer fail to attract any applicants. Audiology and Speech Pathology counts a successful search as one that has a single applicant. Yes, the situation is different in philosophy. For us it is a buyer's market. That is definitely not true across the university. We have to offer competitive packages to attract and retain good faculty. The state either doesn't understand that or doesn't care. Yet if we continue to accept contracts that are not terrible but just a little worse than the last one, then there won't be much of a university for the younger brothers and sisters of our current students to attend.
So why not pay Audiology professors more and philosophy professors less?
Or why not quit? Lots of unemplyed philosophers would be thrilled with those "crappy" jobs.
Steven Hales does a good job of summing things up. What motivated a lot of us at my university is the exploitation of adjuncts that he mentions. The system wanted to make them teach 5 courses instead of 4 in order to be considered full time while still paying them the same salary. They also wanted to give administrators broader authority to retrench faculty (something which our faculty union has successfully fought against in the past), require certain courses to be taught online, and do a vast number of other things (the "thousand little cuts" Hales mentions) that would lower the quality of education we provide. Above all, they have treated the union with contempt; the chancellor (a remnant of our since-voted-out Tea-Party governor) was not present at the negotiations, and their team left early with a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer. Fortunately we have a strong union– though this strike will surely test how strong.
My colleagues and I currently are shut out of our university email accounts (if you have correspondence with any of us, or are expecting reviews, article revisions or other such things, please bear that in mind). Our salary and ALL (capitalized as such in the email sent to us by our provost earlier this week) benefits have been cut off. Apart from that, we've had a lot of support from our students, and today for the first time this semester I saw all of the other members of my department. Hoping this situation will be resolved quickly.
As a relatively new faculty member at one of the striking schools (Kutztown), I am wondering in light of all this just how pessimistic to be. While I appreciated the enthusiasm on the picket lines today, I am getting a similar sense to yours from faculty who've been here for some time: that each contract has been weaker than the rest. From earlier comments from union reps, I have the sense that no matter what happens, the new contract will be worse than the last and will effectively amount to a pay cut (no raises for last or this year, followed by raises that likely won't even offset inflation and rising health costs).
In other words, it seems as if there is no winning here. The best case scenario seems to be one in which we continue the downward slope, but do so more slowly than we would otherwise. Is there a silver lining I am not seeing? Obviously I am not (especially as a temporary member who would like to stay at KU) suggesting this isn't a fight worth picking. I am genuinely wondering how much to hope for.
How much to hope for is, of course, the million dollar question. I think this is realistic, and not negligible: drawing real attention to the fact that the funding for the PASSHE universities is the same as it was 17 years ago, despite a 10% increase since then in enrollment and 17 years of inflation and adding more administrators. The state wants to balance the books on our backs. Getting the public on our side, getting them to see that if they want quality public higher education for their children then they will have to support a fair contract for faculty—those are realistic goals. Another reasonable hope: getting rid of the current chancellor, who has clearly angered the governor by not preventing a strike (there is also a rumor he is not returning the governor's phone calls). Maybe the next system chancellor will do the hard work of campaigning on behalf of the universities with the legislature. What all that means in dollars and cents for this specific contract, I don't know. Something better than the state's last proposal anyway.
I see you are ready to race to the bottom, to eagerly take whatever subsistence wage the state will eventually offer. I am literally walking the picket line to protect the wages of the people at the bottom. I am forgoing my salary to stand with the adjuncts and try to prevent the implementation of a two-tiered system. But you tell me to quit my job instead. Should you reconsider your view, I would be pleased to hand you a "will work for binding arbitration" sign and walk beside you in the line.
I'm an ex-pat American philosopher who has been a member of the National Tertiary Education Union here in Australia since I first took up my position back in 1994. I know that there is very little I can do to assist you in your struggle for a decent contract. University administrators are not likely to care about any petition that the NTEU might get up in support of you. But I would like to take the opportunity to express solidarity and to wish you the best of luck. It's never easy to resort to a strike since the first people to get hurt are the students. But that's the nature of industrial action.
I don't know that you can win, since I don't have a clear idea of the legal and social context in which the strike is happening. But I do know this: the average Australian academic enjoys better pay and conditions than the average American academic precisely because of our union and the union's willingness to strike when we have to.
Congratulations! The news headlines suggest the faculty achieved a victory.
That remains to be seen. All we know now is that the strike ended and that the union made concessions to the state on salaries and health insurance costs. For all we know, it may be that the state dropped all the ridiculous changes they introduced for just this purpose and got exactly what they wanted: another contract that effectively cuts faculty salaries.
The PA faculty have settled with the state, and it is fair to say that the union won: our contract is considerably better than the "last best offer" ultimatum that the state gave us and led to our strike. I believe that all of the retrenchment and online teaching provisions wanted by the state have been struck. Importantly, we held the line on adjuncts: they are still considered regular members of the faculty for salary and benefits. What we sacrificed to get that was a hit in our health care benefits. We would not have achieved anything like this contract without collective action.
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