UW Employees Win Organizing Rights

After a decades long struggle, academic workers in the University of Wisconsin System have finally won collective bargaining rights.

Action in the recently-adopted state budget, advanced by pro-union legislators, grants the legal right to form a union to faculty, academic staff, and research assistants at state universities across Wisconsin. The change affects nearly 25,000 workers who had previously been excluded from collective bargaining under the state’s labor laws.

Bryan Kennedy, president of AFT-Wisconsin and a faculty member at UW-Milwaukee remarked on the victory, “Academic workers want and need unions just like any other workers. This means that we can exercise our voice for fair treatment and stronger universities.”

Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and State Representatives Mark Pocan (D-Madison) and Cory Mason (D-Racine) led the proposals through the budget process with rank-and-file union members mobilizing the necessary political will.

With the enabling legislation passed, unions will now need to organize, campus by campus, with a base of support from local unions that have been in place for decades.

“At UW-Madison, we have advanced our common interests for years, without a collective bargaining agreement. With these new rights, we intend to win a representation election and negotiate a contract that fairly represents the contributions made by our members,” said David Ahrens, a researcher at the UW-Madison, and president of United Faculty & Academic Staff (UFAS, AFT-W Local 223).

Faculty and academic staff on other UW campuses formed The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP, AFT-W Local 3535) to do the same thing.

“A union is a way to build better universities through democratic decision-making by the leadership at the core of the UW: faculty and academic staff,” said TAUWP president Mark Evenson, a faculty member at UW-Plattville.

Ahrens and Evenson both agree that organizing will be a challenge unless faculty and academic staff are a part of building a union themselves.

“As an academic and a former union organizer, I believe that union representation in higher education is long overdue,” said Ahrens. “We also have the added responsibility of advocating for a strong, vital public university system that is accessible to all Wisconsinites.”

Research assistants are also building from a base of graduate assistant unionism. In 1969, the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA, AFT-W Local 3220) formed the nation’s first graduate employee union. In the mid-80s, when bargaining rights for teaching and project assistants were written into law, research assistants were excluded. Since then, thousands of graduate assistants have worked under union contracts on the Madison and Milwaukee campuses. Now, those local unions will seek to organize roughly 2,500 new members, to join with the nearly 4,000 already represented.

Building a Movement

“Organizing research assistants is not just about building the labor movement in higher education, but also about building the next generation of pro-union workers who come through our universities,” says TAA co-president Peter Rickman.

Rickman credits former TAA activist and current Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president David Newby, still a TAA member, who proved instrumental in convincing the leadership in the Legislature to make the expansion of union rights at the UW a priority.

Rickman noted that the TAA had already won tuition remission, health insurance, sick leave and a grievance process for all graduate assistants. “We have always spoken with one voice for graduate assistants and hopefully we will speak louder and more forcefully with all grad workers in one union,” Rickman said.

Winning “wall-to-wall” organzing rights at the UW would mean taking on many of the issues in higher education, in addition to typical workplace concerns, he said.

“Just as workers built the labor movement in manufacturing, the building trades, and the service sector – academics are building their own 21st Century union movement – and that will only strengthen and raise standards in the UW System,” Rickman concluded.