In the shadow of Labor Day, the Eastern Michigan University chapter of the American Association of University Professors has voted to strike. They have cited decreasing real wages, a decreased role for full-time faculty and a general lack of respect from the administration. Most of us at the Eastern Echo support their decision.
America has long had an ambiguous relationship with labor. While we celebrate it with a long weekend, that holiday was shifted by five months in order to avoid recalling the Haymarket riots that precipitated it. While eight-hour days and overtime pay are an entitlement for most workers, the unions that achieved those victories are deemphasized even as those protections are eroded.
And when regarding labor disputes, much of America sympathizes with the owners and management even as concessions wrung from unions undermine the wages and protections of average Americans. Too often, the concern is more the inconvenience of a delayed flight or a missed class than solidarity.
The administration has negotiated in bad faith, walking away from the bargaining table before the start of classes. The administration has refused to seriously consider the position of the faculty. Furthermore, the administration has misrepresented and sought to cloud the issues surrounding the strike, polarizing the students against the faculty.
While the administration charges that the faculty strike is illegal, it is important to consider this in the political context of labor relations. Under Governor Engler, state employees were barred from striking, a move intended to bust teachers' unions. But we should all remember that illegal does not equal immoral, and that the administration's moral arguments are virtually non-existent.
The morality of striking, even though it inconveniences students, is founded in the belief of freedom of association and in the belief that capitalism is best served by allowing groups to exercise their power collectively. While it may be illegal, in this case the law is against justice.
Further than that, it should be clear that the interests of most students are in line with those of the strikers. While the administration threatens to increase tuition to pay professors, to drive a wedge between students and faculty, they have not seriously considered cutting administrative costs (though this is no surprise). Students would benefit from higher pay for faculty, allowing EMU to attract a higher caliber of professor (many young faculty have found that they are paid more at Washtenaw Community College than at EMU). Students would also benefit from decreased class size, allowing more detailed treatment of subjects and more interaction with instructors. Finally, the drive to have more full professors teaching would allow EMU students to have confidence in the expertise of the faculty and avoid the notions of graduate students teaching subjects that they have little interest or knowledge.
With the fourth-highest paid administrators in Michigan's public higher education system, and a history of fiscal debacles regarding the laughably inept handling of Kirkpatrick's departure (the blame for which must be shared by the regents and the administration), the whining over paying faculty more could not be more self-serving. Instead of investing in capital improvements like an unnecessary new union, or the boondoggle of the presidential mansion, the administration should have been preparing to support the faculty that differentiate this institution from community colleges, and even going further in attempting to recruit more top quality faculty. With their treatment of the strikers, EMU's administration is hurting the ability of future students to receive the best education possible.
It is also good to remember that while a strong program taught by passionate, intelligent and well-compensated faculty can attract students that will reflect well both on this institution and on the rest of the student body, no one has ever chosen a college on the strength of their bureaucracy. Administrators exist to serve the students and the faculty, not the students and the administration, nor just the administration. Rather than carping about the illegality of the strike and sending passive-aggressive mass e-mails that minimize the responsibility of the administration, perhaps some time reconsidering the central missions of the university would be a better use of their time. As long as the strike continues, we imagine that all of us in the EMU community will have some to spare.