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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

To make a political post even more political...

Do American university staff belong to unions? Including the faculty?

Hopefully this can be resolved with words, but striking for better working conditions has a very long history.

In my mind a key part of what makes a university a university is that the faculty are the ultimate authority. Thats's the whole point of tenure. The administration is supposed to exist to handle details needed to facilitate the work of the faculty. That unionization of faculty (especially senior faculty) has apparently become necessary really speaks to the massive amount of administrative creep that has taken place, and the perversion of these institutions from academic centers into businesses. It still isn't too late for professors to reclaim their rightful authority, but many of them are too ground down, overworked, or willing to be just another employee at another big organization without understanding their broader responsibilities to education in general.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that faculty at private universities can be classified as managers, and hence denied the right to unionize. This probably isn’t relevant for GATech as it is a public school, but it does mean at many universities faculty are at the relative mercy of the administration.

I am laughing inside...not at you but at the idea. Unions are illegal in GA not just that but a lot of academic staff are adjuncts very few are tendered professors. That means they are rehired or not every year or couple of years as needed.

I'm not aware of any faculty unions representing professors. There are some academic student employee (inc. grad students) unions and a handful of postdoc unions.

some faculty are unionized (I know of at least a few where the faculty are all NEA members)

Additionally there are not-officially recognized groups such as AAUP (American Association of University Professionals) that represent faculty issues.

clarifying my own post...because my language may have been confusing

faculty actually refers to the body of faculty at a university or in a department as a whole...when writing to certain communities

What I meant was that certain universities have the whole body of faculty unionized

At private schools there are no unions due to NLRB v. Yeshiva University. The SC denied faculty the right to collectively bargain...

They don't have the right to collectively bargain in Georgia (the state).

Is this because the are public sector employees?

No, because Georgia police officers, who are public employees, have unions.

Likewise in Wisconsin. The state government did what they could get away with. They can deny union rights to public sector employees, but aren't required to treat all public sector employees the same.

Still, formal union representation would not prevent a wildcat strike.

Union is a 4-letter word in the US, especially in red states

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