Closing thoughts on the strike

Some closing thoughts on the conflict between the FA and the administration that culminated in last fall's strike.

I suppose the lead can be that less has changed, at least in relations between the FA and administration, than many of us expected. Many expected Armageddon. It didn't happen. Neither the FA nor the Poshard/Cheng administration has ceased to exist. Neither side won a clear victory, but neither has peace and goodwill broken out. Now back to business as usual isn't the worst of all possible results. The Cheng administration has not engaged in any significant retribution that I'm aware of (my relatively smooth approval to serve as chair is one sign of that for those who don't regard me as a traitor to the True Cause). Nor, so far as I am aware, has there been much in the way of action by FA stalwarts to punish their colleagues who didn't strike.

Of course that fact that nothing much has changed doesn't mean that a stalemate was inevitable, or that there aren't longer-term consequences of the strike and the conflict leading up to it that have yet to become evident. I still tend to believe that the FA faced a true existential threat during the strike, and suspect that putting an end to the FA was at least one result devoutly to be wished as far as some on the administrative side were concerned. It's also possible that had more faculty joined the FA strike, more effectively shutting down campus, Cheng could have been sacked. The fact that one emerges from a contest with the parties more or less where they started doesn't mean that the stakes weren't high in the first place, only that the contest came out more or less even.

Thoughts on possible longer term results after the break.

The Details and the Big Picture

The FA has released the TA on the Contract and the Back to Work agreement.  Predictably, the conversation has turned to the micro-analysis of what we "got" out of striking.  Some are concerned that little headway was made on the primary issues of FE layoffs and furloughs, although that "little" seems to be measured against either unstated Platonic ideals or predetermined conclusions of the FA's perpetual failure.  A few comments, then, after the break about the big and little pictures.

Different Strategies for Hard Times

We are close to being done with labor negotiations, one way or another.  This is a time to find the survivable middle ground in the positions staked out by different constituencies.  But as we try not to implode in the endgame, it's worth thinking about how we started and how this whole thing might have played out differently.  There are a host of possibilities; after the break I link to two that I think show an interesting spectrum.

For Your Friday Reading Enjoyment

Okay, time to kick this thing off, I guess.  Thanks to Dave for the "Tonight Show" introduction, but I promise not to do a monologue. However, I cannot promise that I won't render some Carnac the Magnificent schtick before all this labor negotiation is over.  Given how often I've been asked to look into a crystal ball to predict what the outcome of a strike will be, I think it only appropriate.

I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of pieces of news.  First, the ACsE has taken its strike deadline vote and has set the date: November 3.  Read more about it here.  If you've been following the other unions' negotiation reports, you'll note some similarities and differences in what seems to be happening with the FA.  The strike votes certainly seem to have motivated the discussions at the negotiation table for all, but they are not reaching much meaningful agreement on the sticking points.  The difference, though, is that while the pace and amount of negotiation has increased for the FA, it does not seem to have done so as much for the other unions.  More is the pity.  For the ACsE, particularly, there are some pretty low (or no!) cost proposals that a trusting Administration could pretty easily agree to but still will not. 

And then this bit of national news from the Washington Monthly.  Okay, maybe this is news for the rest of the nation, but I think this is so day-to-day here at SIUC that we've pretty much taken it for granted.  More disturbing than the excellent analysis of administrative bloat is the hopelessness of the bodies identified to correct the problem:

On any given campus, the only institution with the actual power to halt the onward march of the all-administrative university is the board of trustees or regents— which, as we’ve seen, tend to be unprepared or disinclined to make waves. But they need to do so if their institutions are to be saved from sinking into the expanding swamp of administrative mediocrity.

It is not within the purview of our current labor negotiations to limit or reverse the growth of our already top-heavy administration.  Still, I doubt too many of us will hold our breath waiting for the BOT to do anything about it.  Ah well, at least misery loves company -- and we are so not alone in this predicament.

Answer: Transparency, accountability, and shared governance
riiiip!
Question: Name three things you won't find in Anthony Hall.

Performance Based Funding

Sheila Simon has an op-ed in the Southern extolling the virtues of Performance Based Funding.

There are lots of reasons to be skeptical and worried about this initiative, it seems to me; they are spelled out better than I can do so here by Ryan Netzley in a posting he did some time ago.  Illinois taxpayers certainly have a right to make sure that SIUC is not squandering their money. But it is particularly rich that the legislature is meddling more in university affairs while state funding levels, as a proportion of overall spending, have been in steep decline for years. It is also the case that outsiders' analysis of SIUC "performance" will increase the power of the bean counters on campus, with their relentless emphasis on recruitment and retention.

While Simon emphasizes that many different measures of performance will be used, I have a sneaking suspicion that the ones that carry the most weight will not be the qualitative measures faculty employ internally in assigning grades (the analogy she uses), but measures that are easily quantifiable by outsiders, and quantifiable in terms of money: retention rates, graduation rates, in short how many students you are giving degrees to and at what expense. Programs are measured solely by their credit hour production, or the number of majors they produce, rather than on their overall contribution to the intellectual climate on campus, and their intrinsic importance to a university education.

Poshard on Faculty Salaries

A second post on Poshard's morning conversation today.  When pushed a bit about funding on new recruitment and retention schemes--"enrollment management" (as if we are in the business of managing students), marketing, Saluki First Year--and on whether funds spent on such things should rather go to support faculty and staff (i.e., faculty and staff directly engaged in our core mission of education and research), Poshard sounded another theme: faculty salaries went up a lot in the last contract, and something has to give this time around.  Poshard's argument boils down to this: we're paying you almost as much as you deserve, so we should be able to cut your pay or lay you off whenever we want to. 

Poshard threw around various figures from what he said was the 2010 IBHE report on faculty salaries. He said that when he took over as President, one of the goals given to him by the BOT was to bring up faculty salaries to par, and he said this had been done.  Has it?

The gods of management

Laura Dreuth Zeman suggested the following bit of summer reading in the theology of management.  The article sounds fascinating (though, being on vacation, I will own to not having read it myself).  Laura's summary follows, continued after the break, and the article is embedded at the end.

The article is titled “Archetypes of destruction: Notes on the impact of distorted management theory on education communities,” by Mark Chater of Bishop Grosseteste College in the UK. Bishop uniquely merges Jungian archetypal psychoanalytical theory with public education management theory. He describes conflicts in management, or mismanagement as he refers to it, in public education by drawing parallels to two mythic deities of mismanagement, Systemania, the god of “distorted change” creating public educational settings that are in “permanent and uncontrolled change,” and Permacrisis, the “god of employee destruction brought on by fear.” These parallels to SIUC and “archetypally unhealthy management,” may solicit a reaction that is a delicate blend of comic and tragic.

What are you doing about your furlough form?

So we've all gotten this mysterious Faculty Furlough Days form, with no clear guidance on how we are supposed to fill them out.  The administration hasn't officially said we can't, or shouldn't, or had better not dare, cancel class.  And the FA, apparently on the advice of legal counsel, doesn't feel it's in any position to give people much guidance, either (not to mention that it doesn't want to help sort out the mess the administration has made).  This leaves faculty puzzled, and chairs caught in the middle.  


So what are you thinking about doing with your form, and your "required Faculty Furlough Days"?   Let's get some comments going, people.  (I know that there are some of you out there--aren't there?  Maybe some of you are reading this on furlough, for all I know.  Is that legal?)  Comments can be anonymous if that makes you feel more comfortable.  

On the collective bargaining teach-in

The text of today's DE article on yesterday's Teach-In includes some pretty representative quotations from people describing the conversation at the meeting, though the headline is unintelligible and the lead misrepresents the amount of time spent talking about the possibility of a strike.  The conversation really revolved around the threat to collective bargaining at our campus, its connection to wider trends at places like Wisconsin, and how faculty and others could better articulate their side of the story.  


My favorite part of the conversation was a point the article gets to toward the end. Ryan Netzley, whose evaluation of a recent missive from the Office of the Chancellor you may have seen on a blog near you, argued that the key to winning a broader set of hearts and minds is to get beyond the financial details and the procedural issues of collective bargaining in order to articulate the rival visions for the future of the university.  

A smoking memo?

I've seen the memo the administration sent the FA announcing the ultimatum.  Some office staffer made an honest mistake.  The memo was dated March 28th, the first day of mediation.  That is, the administration didn't wait until the end of the second day of mediation (March 29) to decide to declare an impasse; they had already decided on day one--at the latest.  They had also already decided that we had rejected their ultimatum before they had made it.  This is what you do when your goal isn't an agreement but an impasse.  Here's the memo in full.  Click on it to enlarge it.  

Administrative Ultimatum Rejected by Faculty Association

Headlines in the press (like the one in the Southern and in the administration press release) read rather differently than the title of this post, saying something like "Faculty Reject Administrative Offer".  But what the administration has presented is a "last, best, and final" offer.  "Ultimatum" is Latin for "last, best, and final offer".  (Trust me, I teach Latin.)  Both sides will put out more details on their positions, and you'll likely find things to agree and disagree about with what both sides say.  But the single most important thing to keep in mind is that the administration is now putting forward demands, while the FA is putting forward proposals.  That is, the FA is willing to negotiate in good faith, still.  The administration, if it was ever willing to negotiate in good faith, isn't willing to negotiate at all right now.  They are only interested in imposing their own terms.  

DE op-ed piece on collective bargaining

There's an excellent op-ed piece on collective bargaining in Monday's DE by history faculty Natasha Zaretsky, Rachel Stocking, and Gray Whaley, who also have gathered support from 40 other faculty in 20 departments (I'm one of them). It will be interesting to see if the administration responds, as Glen Poshard responded very rapidly back in November to an essay in the Southern Illinoisian by Robbie Lieberman, chair of history.  Robbie's piece can be found here; Poshard's response is here.