Unions on Campus

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in part, prohibits Congress from enacting laws restricting the right of people to assemble peacefully. Consequently, the First Amendment has been interpreted as meaning that individuals are free to organize and join unions of their choosing. Unions are a collection of members who come together for the common purpose of engaging in collective bargaining or negotiations over terms and conditions of employment, such as wages, benefits, and other items for which bargaining is not prohibited by state or federal law. While the majority of public teachers in American K-12 schools belong to unions, this is not the case with regard to faculty members and other instructional staff members on the campuses of colleges and universities in the United States. This entry discusses issues associated with the status of unions on college and university campuses in both public and private institutions of higher learning.

Insofar as union leaders advocate the importance of organization and strength in numbers, labor organizers typically identify substandard working conditions, low wages, nonexistent or minimal benefits, and mistreatment of employees by employers to spark unionism in the work force. In this way, unions justify their activities as providing protection for their members from employers while negotiating benefits for workers that would otherwise be unattainable.

When organizers attempt to form unions, they must demonstrate that prospective members share

a “community of interests” that, generally, includes common concerns over such matters as wages, work hours, benefits, qualifications, training and skills, and job functions. While the community of interests should be readily apparent for faculty members and other instructional personnel, as opposed to nonprofessional staff such as maintenance workers and office assistants, some view the advantages of this requirement as having to be balanced against the disadvantages of a proliferation of multiple smaller bargaining units that could reduce the strength of unions and their collective numbers.