Academic Unions in Higher Education: Impacts on Faculty Salary, Compensation and Promotions

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of collective bargaining's impacts on salary, compensation (salary plus fringe benefits) and promotion for faculty at unionized four‐year colleges and universities during the 1970's. The results suggest that there have been no general economic gains associated with the adoption of collective bargaining by college and university faculty.

The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Faculty Compensation in Community Colleges

“…Although there may be noneconomic benefits related to collective bargaining, most academicians associate unionization with economic benefits. A basic premise often voiced in discussions of collective bargaining is that the collective bargaining process generates economic gains that otherwise would not have been available (Brown & Stone, 1977). If collective action proved to be successful in an economic sense, then the direct effects of bargaining would be reflected in increased faculty salaries, benefits, or both.…”

“…Despite the growth of unionism, there has been only limited empirical research on the topic of economic gains from collective bargaining in higher education (Birnbaum, 1974(Birnbaum, , 1976Brown & Stone, 1977;Leslie & Hu, 1977;Marshall, 1979;Morgan & Kearney, 1977). Although some studies have included two-year institutions in their samples, none have focused exclusively on community colleges.…”

Faculty collective bargaining: Implications for academic performance and vitality

“…Since salary increases as a result of bargaining tend to be pretty much what they should be without bargaining (Brown and Stone, 1977), bargaining is not likely to provide agreement by the parties on the more common types of performance improvements: more work for the same pay; much more work for slightly more pay; or (unthinkably) the same work for less pay.…”

Is There Really a Faculty Union Salary Premium?

“…The earliest studies compared average salaries (or their growth rates) across institutions using data from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Of these, Birnbaum (1974Birnbaum ( , 1976, Morgan and Kearney (1977), and Brown and Stone (1977) found positive union wage premia, whereas Marshall (1979) found none. Later studies applied regression techniques to the AAUP data to control for variation in institutional characteristics such as type (AAUP or Carnegie classification), public versus private control, and faculty composition by rank.…”