Cecilia Winters could tell something was wrong. Female faculty members at Manhattanville College in Purchase, Westchester County, seemed to lag behind in salary. Even as a member of the faculty compensation committee, she had trouble convincing administrators that there was a problem.

In 1997, Winters, a professor of economics and management, conducted a statistical analysis that accounted for other variables, producing irrefutable proof of pervasive salary discrimination.

"We found that it cost about $3,000 just to be a female at Manhattanville College," Winters said. The compensation committee and the college president agreed to level up the pay scale and institute a step system of increases to ensure faculty members advanced equitably.

President Richard Berman's condition, though, was to increase the teaching load from three to four courses per semester - this at a college where assistant professors start, today, at only $36,000, in one of the nation's most expensive neighborhoods.

The faculty voted to accept. "We were desperate," Winters said.

Last year, as the agreement expired, the compensation committee tried to address the workload issue, calling it inappropriate for a small liberal arts college with only 1,400 undergraduates.

"We are teaching a load typical of a community college faculty," said Janet Simon, professor of education, "but with much lower salaries and higher expectations for research, publications, committee work and community outreach."

But there was no give from the president, who came from a health management background, Simon said. Now, in fact, he has unilaterally scrapped the agreed-upon step system.

That response, following years of other frustration, gives added impetus to a change that many faculty members feel will give them a real voice at the college: forming their own union.

Faculty frustrations with so-called shared governance - "shadow governance," said Irene Whelan of the history department - prompted them last year to turn to New York State United Teachers and NYSUT's partner, the American Association of University Professors, for help. Now Manhattanville faculty are on their way to a unionization vote later this year.

Citing knowledge of the union's progress on behalf of teachers, Rebecca Rich, professor of education, said, "We know how helpful a union can be."

After collecting authorization cards from 75 percent of 69 full-time faculty members on campus last fall, the fledgling Manhattanville Faculty Alliance asked for card-check recognition from the administration, which would have granted them collective bargaining status without having to go to a vote. Not only did the college decline - it launched a "Yeshiva" challenge to contest the rights of private college faculty members to organize a union at all. Hearings are scheduled through March.

- Ned R. Hoskin

The Yeshiva decision

The Manhattanville administration's challenge stems from a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that faculty members at Yeshiva University in the Bronx could not unionize because they were "managers" with input into running the college. Although it was not intended as a blanket prohibition against private faculty organizing, the decision has been interpreted that way many times in the past 20 years.

NYSUT organizers helped break that precedent in 1999 with a victory in Yeshiva hearings that allowed a union vote to proceed at Manhattan College in the Bronx. NYSUT and AAUP are still working to organize Manhattan College.

NYSUT works with AAUP on organizing

Pain and progress are often inseparable on the road to victory, and nowhere is that more apparent than in efforts to organize the faculty at private Manhattan College in the Bronx.

New York State United Teachers and local leaders of the unionization effort at the college rejoiced in last year's National Labor Relations Board decision that determined faculty members are not managers and have every right to form a union. Unfortunately, the first attempt at a union election failed.

Now NYSUT and the American Association of University Professors have launched a joint effort to continue the battle to organize the approximately

170 faculty members at the college. AAUP is a national, non-profit higher education organization representing 45,000 people.

The campaign will be spearheaded by the newly formed United Manhattan Faculty, AAUP, NYSUT/AFT and the AFL-CIO. The UMF is an outgrowth of the existing AAUP chapter and dozens of activists committed to collective bargaining.

Faculty leaders are mounting a campaign to educate colleagues about academic collective bargaining. Concerns include salary inequities, teaching loads, health insurance and retirement agreements.

Organizing higher ed

The Manhattan NLRB decision is "an important interpretation of federal law" in that faculty "may not be excluded automatically from their right to organize a union under the National Labor Relations Act," said Michael Maurer, AAUP's director of organizing and services.

Since 1980, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred faculty at private Yeshiva University from forming a union has stifled organizing efforts at private higher education institutions. Yeshiva academics were held to be managers, and thus excluded from NLRA jurisdiction. But the decision was never intended to be a blanket ban on private school organizing.

NYSUT and AAUP leaders are working together with a shared view about the benefits of unionization. "Union success in higher education rests in our ability to resolve conflicts and address the important issues faced by faculty and staff," said Pauline Kinsella, NYSUT director of field services.

Renewed emphasis

The campaign is part of a renewed and expanded emphasis on organizing unrepresented employees by NYSUT.

"NYSUT is working to ensure that the unorganized workers in education and other related fields have the opportunity to join our union," said NYSUT President Tom Hobart. "The union will use its collective voice and strength to remain at the forefront of economic, social, and political decision-making, and to improve New York's educational institutions and the lives of the people who work in them."

- Ned R. Hoskin

Focus on higher ed

A program on higher education issues is planned for the 2001 Local Presidents Conference in Rochester, May 1-2, just prior to the New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly.