unions

mild-mannered professor by night, wild-eyed organizer by day . . .

monte on September 30, 2013

Faculty blasts proposed ‘Soviet-style’ changes in MnSCU management

  • Article by: MAURA LERNER , Star Tribune
  • Updated: September 30, 2013 – 12:51 PM

‘Charting the Future’ plan would hurt quality, MnSCU faculty says. Administration said it would not centralize colleges and universities system

A faculty group is denouncing a proposal to reshape Minnesota’s state colleges and universities, saying it would create “a Soviet-style management structure” that does little to benefit students.

“This is going to lower the quality of their education, and not do anything significant to reduce student debt or make tuition more affordable,” said Monte Bute, a sociology professor at Metro State University.

The proposal, “Charting the Future,” which was released in June as a draft report, calls for sweeping changes at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system (MnSCU), which has some 430,000 students at 54 campuses.

Among other things, the plan encourages more coordination among the campuses, and suggests that some campuses and programs may be merged.

On Monday, the Inter Faculty Organization, which represents 4,000 faculty members at seven Minnesota state universities, released a scathing critique of the proposal.

“We oppose moving toward a Soviet-style management structure with centrally controlled decisionmaking by bureaucrats who are far removed from the classroom,” the faculty union said.

Administration officials dispute the criticism.

“The draft recommendations neither suggest nor should lead to more centralization or a larger system office,” said Michael Dougherty, a vice chancellor at MnSCU.

Nancy Black, the union president, said faculty members were caught off-guard when the draft report was released in June, after classes had ended. It wasn’t until last week, she said, that the union’s board was able to meet and hammer out its response.

The key criticisms: It could squeeze out “innovation” at the various colleges and universities and allow the business community to dictate academic programs, possibly at the expense of the liberal arts. “Student program choices should not be limited to the programs supported by the business community,” the group said.

The proposal has yet to be approved by the board of trustees.

Administrators say they have been seeking feedback on the draft report, and that it won’t be presented to the board until November.

Officials say the draft report was the result of months of discussions by three work groups involving 46 students, faculty members, administrators and others.

But Black, who was one of three faculty members on the work groups, said the report took her by surprise. “We had, what I would term euphemistically, lively discussions,” she said, but her group did not vote on any of the recommendations. She also said she did not see the final draft until it was made public June 19.

Black said the reaction from faculty has been fairly intense. “Let me put it this way: There were enough faculty around that were sufficiently enraged at me for being a part of it,” she said.

The faculty union also said the proposal would “have the effect of union busting,” because it suggests merging collective bargaining units.

Said Bute: “What we’re requesting is that the chancellor and the board of trustees look carefully at this, basically hit the delete button [and]  go back to the drawing board.”

Maura Lerner • 612-673-7384

Union Solidarity Today or Wage Slavery Tomorrow

monte on March 24, 2012

I work in a union shop. A few colleagues are non-members. They have doubts about the efficacy of collective action.They behave as if activism is beneath them, or that they have no dog in this fight. I can only assume that they are either naïve or woefully ignorant of the existential threat that the so-called “Right to Work” (RTW) amendment poses to every faculty member in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system.

Equally deluded are the handful of “principled” libertarians who claim that unions are a coercive imposition on their “freedom.” They want neither to belong to a union nor to pay anything for the benefits that a union bestows upon them. Economists call these two groups “free riders.” In truth, that is just a polite euphemism for freeloaders.

The Inter Faculty Organization (IFO) forces no one to join. However, you are mistaken if you believe that you are not dependent on the union for the wages, benefits, and workplace protections that you enjoy. Because non-members receive the same benefits from our contract settlements as do members, we ask that you pay a “Fair Share” of the cost of bargaining and protecting the provisions of that agreement.

The IFO holds to a rather old-fashioned idea: We are a community of scholars. In the 12th century, Peter Abelard established at the University of Paris the progenitor of the modern college and university. Modeled on the medieval guild, Paris exemplified the principle of autonomy, a federated and self-regulating community of teachers and scholars.

During the 20th century, trustees and a new class of professional administrators eventually destroyed those self-governing faculty guilds that had persisted for 800 years. Teachers and scholars increasingly became wage slaves in a corporate university, at-will employees with few protections, minimal bargaining power, and little say in governance. Administrators and trustees held a monopoly of power in higher education.

Faculty members soon realized that without their traditional form of self-governance, they were individually subject to autocratic behavior by administrators and trustees. The community of scholars became a shape shifter—it organized faculty unions.

The IFO improves and protects your wages, health coverage, pensions, and contract rights, whether you are a member or not. With the combined 2006 and 2008 contracts, the IFO won salaries increases of nearly 17 percent. Since the Great Recession, we have protected those gains and stopped ongoing attempts to cut faculty salaries and benefits. Even if you are not a member, we provide professional representation if the administration violates your contractual rights.

Most importantly, the IFO has organized a countervailing power to the potentially absolute power of MnSCU and local university administrations. We now have shared governance in public higher education. This faculty power grows from a democratic and participatory organization that projects a collective voice—we hang together, or the powers-that-be will hang us one by one. Much of the time, the slogan “The union makes us strong” seems a cliché; the RTW campaign has made this assertion a pragmatic truth.

MnSCU controls public higher education at 31 colleges and universities. Chancellor Rosenstone says he is running a $2 billion business and, befittingly, has joined the board of the Minnesota Business Partnership—an organization composed of the CEOs of the state’s 100 largest banks and corporations.

A Board of Trustees, appointed by former Governor Tim Pawlenty, governs MnSCU. Business leaders, including current and past executive directors of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and the Minnesota Business Partnership, dominate the board. The market ideology that permeates MnSCU has no sympathy for faculty unions. In fact, there are Trustees and MnSCU employees who support efforts to weaken and destroy public unions.

Consider doing your job without the IFO having your back. It is not a comforting thought. The choice is yours—union solidarity today or wage slavery tomorrow.

“Don’t Mourn, Organize!” I’m Working for the Faculty Union

monte on January 17, 2012

MONTE BUTE ELECTED AS IFO ACTION COORDINATOR

by Russ Stanton, IFO Director of Government Relations

The Inter Faculty Organization (IFO)  Board of Directors has elected Monte Bute to the position of Action Coordinator. The IFO represents faculty at Minnesota’s seven state universities. The Action Coordinator will chair the Action Committee and:

  • Help publicize the valuable work and efforts of the IFO and its members to various external constituent groups.
  • Engage in efforts to build solidarity and community within the IFO and its membership and with various external groups.
  • Coordinate information flow between faculty and the Negotiating Team regarding issues and progress of negotiations.
  • Coordinate actions that will move the negotiation process on and encourage settlement.
  • Keep the Negotiating Team informed of action plans and be receptive to input from the Negotiating Team; and
  • Work with the GRC to encourage efforts at writing letters to legislators and the local press.

Monte Bute is an associate professor of sociology at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota. His opinion essays appear on the editorial pages of daily newspapers in the Twin Cities. Bute also frequently testifies on higher education issues before the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives.

Bute began teaching at Metropolitan State as a community faculty member in 1984. He finally finished a long-delayed B.A. at the university in 1991. After a 20-year career as a community organizer, he realized that his next mission in life was teaching. To fulfill that calling, Bute began graduate school rather late in life. Professor Bute has been a prolific writer over the years, publishing 65 articles in scholarly publications and the popular press.

Sociologists of Minnesota (SOM) gave Bute the Distinguished Sociologist award in 2004. Bute has received Metropolitan State University’s Outstanding Teacher award and the Excellence in Teaching award. He has also been given awards by Minneapolis Community and Technical College, the Jobs Now Coalition, and the Job Training Partnership Association.

Professor Bute is a past president of both Sociologists of Minnesota and the National Council of State Sociological Associations (NCSSA). Bute has been the editor of Sociograph, associate editor of the Sociological Imagination, and has served on the editorial board of Contexts, a journal of the American Sociological Association. He has been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.