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Faculty Senate Updates Position on Collective Bargaining

At its May 2, 2005 meeting, the UW-Madison Faculty Senate passed a resolution which revised its previous position on state legislation that would give collective bargaining rights to UW faculty.  The Senate had previously adopted (April 2000) the recommendations of UW Law Professor Emerita June Weisberger, an expert on public sector law.

New Faculty Senate Position 

The Faculty Senate affirms its support for the seven principles enumerated below as essential features of any collective-bargaining enabling legislation affecting faculty and academic staff employed across the UW System. It instructs PROFS to communicate its support for these principles to the State Legislature while continuing to oppose any enabling legislation that fails to conform to these principles, which are, that any enabling legislation should:
  1. Provide that the Board of Regent shall have sole responsibility for negotiations and administration of any collective-bargaining agreements for faculty;
  2. Preserve the independence of the Madison faculty by permitting it to elect whether, as a separate and distinct group of individuals apart from other academic employees and from the faculties of other universities in the System, it wishes to engage in collective bargaining;
  3. Permit the faculty of each institution in the System to make the same choices concerning the desirability of collective bargaining and the make-up of the bargaining unit;
  4. Subordinate all other provisions of the enabling legislation to the overriding provision that nothing in the law or in bargaining agreements shall be construed or allowed to diminish academic freedom or tenure, or prohibit or restrict the full exercise by the faculty of its functions in any shared-governance mechanisms or practices;
  5. Clarify which faculty (e.g., principal investigators, department chairs, center directors) will be considered supervisory or management personnel;
  6. Exclude from the definition of unfair labor practices the failure to implement improvements in compensation or working conditions gained at a campus regardless of whether the faculty are represented or not, if such improvements are based upon comparisons with comparable higher education institutions or other competitive practices; and
  7. Include effective fact-finding provisions to resolve bargaining impasses.

The Faculty Senate reserves its judgement on the endorsement of any specific bill so as not to contravene the provisions of the following paragraph.

When legislation that seems to meet the above requirements is introduced in the state legislature, a meeting of the UW-Madison faculty will be convened upon recommendation of the University Committee and vote of the Faculty Senate, to discuss and determine whether to support such legislation.An earlier position included only points 1 through 4.  Points 5-7 were added at Professor Weisberger's recommendation.  The changes are designed to protect faculty governance and the faculty's responsibility for the academic program at the university.