The Financial Implications of Collective Bargaining.

Abstract

recency of collective bargaining in American higher education has left numerous major questions unanswered and several areas of inquiry essentially unexplored. The first bargaining agreement in higher education was not reached until 1963, and the bargaining movement was not a serious force in higher education until the City University of New York, Central Michigan University, and Southeastern Massachusetts University were organized in the 1968 academic year. From 13 unionized faculties in 1968, the movement had grown to 288 bargaining units on 481 campuses, involving over 100,000 faculty members by early 1976.1 Although a number of limited studies have now been completed in such areas as the legal and financial aspects of bargaining and the impact of bargaining on institutional governance, the need exists to expand previous samples, consider new questions, and extend analyses into new areas of inquiry. The focus of the study reported herein is on selected financial implications of collective bargaining. Specifically, what are the direct effects of bargaining upon faculty salaries and fringe benefits and on institutional financial ledgers overall? In regard to the former, comparisons are made of faculty compensation in union and nonunion institutions overall and within several institutional categories (e.g., public, private; two-year, four-year). Included are considerations of the longer term effects of bargaining on compensation composed of salaries versus fringe benefits. In regard to the impact on