November-December 2011

Recent years have seen a notable decline in union membership across the United States. Some argue it's because American employees are relatively happy with their work conditions and terms; others believe there are more insidious union-busting forces to blame for splintering labor into various factions.

Either way, the sway of organized labor has lost some of its political teeth since its heyday some decades ago. But Pueblo has long been a union town. It's in our blood. It's a part of our culture.

When we think of unions in Pueblo, though, few would think of the school on the hill, also known as Colorado State University-Pueblo. P.U.L.P. learned of a faculty union in its formative stages from a press release, so I followed up with Timothy McGettigan, CSU-P sociology professor and faculty organizer, to get some clarity on why and how this union is coming into being.

McGettigan reports that 70 full-time faculty have signed union cards in support of the union-organizing effort so far. The reason for organizing now is two-fold: to improve the quality of academics at CSU-Pueblo; and. to re-establish CSU-Pueblo's commitment to serving as an access institution for aspiring students in southern Colorado.

Though this seems like a mutually amenable set of goals for faculty and administration alike, how it should be achieved seems to be the real source of friction. I should note that I contacted Julio Leon, Interim President, and Michael Farley, Vice-President for Financial and Administration, and neither responded to my requests for comment. I also emailed Sal Pace, Keith Swerdfeger and Angela Giron at the state legislature, none of whom responded to my requests either.

McGettigan expanded on the first goal stated above. "Year after year," he writes, "the university has increased its enrollments (which is something that faculty support and applaud), but university administrators have not allocated a proportionate amount of resources to ensure a quality educational experience for those new students. Thus, faculty have been struggling to teach increasing numbers of students with a steadily diminishing pool of resources. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for faculty to provide students with the high quality academic experience that students deserve."

The second concern the faculty group is presenting deals with student access. "Higher education is the bridge to success in the information society," writes McGettigan. "Southern Colorado is the most economically-challenged region in the state. It is CSU-Pueblo's mission to provide the region's students - regardless of how economically-challenged they may be - with the kind of high-quality education that will enable them to aspire to a better, brighter future in the information society.

"In recent years, tuition at CSU-Pueblo has increased to the point that substantial numbers of southern Colorado students - who have been accepted to CSU-Pueblo - have decided not to enroll in college. A faculty union would work very hard to remind administrators that CSU-Pueblo must remain true to its mission as a high-quality access institution."

The 800-pound gorilla in the room has to do with faculty salaries. Anyone familiar with a professor at CSU-P likely has heard complaints about being overworked, underpaid, and about the prevalent use of low-paid adjunct teachers to backfill lower-level classes, rather than hiring more full-time faculty.

McGettigan noted however that, "State law precludes the university from engaging in collective bargaining with a faculty union. Consequently, the union cannot and will not advocate for increased faculty salaries."

The faculty group lists a detailed string of reasons why they are working to create the union now. Examples include recent increases in student tuition, unilateral administrative decisions about repurposing classroom space, and the release of the Veronika String Quartet from employment at CSU-P.  For a more detailed look at the faculty concerns, visit the PULP blog at pueblopulp.com.

Asked about why he felt a union was the best course of action to achieve their goals, McGettigan noted that, thus far, their concerns have been met by "stony silence" at the administrative levels. Though he is optimistic about the openness of incoming president, Lesley DiMare, faculty are taking no chances.

"Unions created a middle class in the US in the 20th century," he writes. "In response, union laborers made the US the wealthiest, most powerful, most productive industrial nation in the world...If we want to help middle class, Main Street Americans, we'll need to organize a new union movement - except this time we'll have to include unions for knowledge workers and service workers (in addition to industrial laborers) in the movement.

"If America is going to thrive," he continues, "and lead the world in the 21st century - just as it did in the 20th - then unions will be the key to our ongoing success."

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Image by: renjith krishnan