New AAUP Report: Freedom in the Classroom

The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure affirms that "teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject." In recent years these understandings have become controversial. Private groups have sought to regulate classroom instruction, advocating the adoption of statutes that would prohibit teachers from challenging deeply held student beliefs or that would require professors to maintain "diversity" or "balance" in their teaching.....Read More

A BETTER BARGAIN FOR STATE EMPLOYEES
by Michael Schwalbe
Assoc. Prof. of Sociology, NCSU
May 29, 2007 (originally appeared in Raleigh News & Observer)

William Faulkner’s line about the past—it’s not dead; in fact,
it’s not even past—aptly applies to North Carolina General Statute
§95-98, which bans collective bargaining by public employees. A
vestige of a bygone era, this law remains a force in the present, to
neither our credit nor benefit.
NCGS §95-98 grew out of efforts to stop the Teamsters from
organizing police and transportation workers in Charlotte in the late
1950s. Even after city officials thwarted this organizing effort,
two Mecklenburg legislators, Reps. Frank Snepp Jr. and Ernest Hicks,
wanted a law that would quash public sector organizing across the state.
Snepp and Hicks drafted a bill that would make it illegal for
public employees to join unions and for any unit of government in
North Carolina to engage in collective bargaining. Their bill was
backed by legislators beholden to textile bosses who feared that
unionized police would be less willing to put down strikes by textile
workers.
Some legislators criticized the bill for being too broad, saying
it should apply only to police. One legislator noted the anti-labor
hand of the textile industry behind the bill. But, with only minor
changes, the bill passed both houses of the General Assembly and
became law in June 1959. It has not gone unchallenged. In 1969,
public employees in Charlotte sued the city in federal district
court, charging that NCGS §95-98 was unconstitutional. A three-judge
panel ruled in /Atkins vs. the City of Charlotte/ that it was indeed
unconstitutional to forbid public employees from joining unions. But
the court upheld the ban on collective bargaining.
In 1974, the law was challenged again in federal district court
in the case of /Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Unit of North Carolina
Association of Educators vs. Phillips/. Plaintiffs argued that NCGS
§95-98 violated public employees’ First Amendment right to freedom of
association. The court agreed in Phillips that the law impeded
employee organizing, but ruled that it was not unconstitutional for
government units to refuse to bargain collectively with employees,
because public employees were not entitled to special access to
government policy makers. A third challenge came in December
2005, when the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of
America and its North Carolina affiliate, UE 150, filed a complaint
with the International Labor Organization (ILO), a branch of the
United Nations. The complaint alleged that NCGS §95-98 violates
international labor law conventions to which the U.S. is a party, and
that it also violates international human rights standards.
Last month the ILO upheld the complaint. The ILO’s investigating
committee found that NCGS §95-98 violates basic principles of freedom
of association by frustrating the main objective of employee
organizing: to bargain collectively about wages, benefits, and local
conditions of employment.
The courts erred in the /Atkins/ and /Phillips/ cases, according
to the ILO, by failing to distinguish between government as employer
and government as policy maker. Public employees must be free, the
ILO decision said, to negotiate with government in its role as
employer. The report thus called for repeal of NCGS §95-98 and the
creation of a framework for public sector collective bargaining in
North Carolina. We now have compelling reasons to put NCGS
§95-98 behind us.
There is, first, the matter of principle. Being able to organize
and bargain collectively with one’s employer are basic human rights,
as stressed by the ILO decision. A law that infringes on these
rights is also an affront to American principles of justice and
fairness. There are practical reasons, too. Workers in states
with public sector unions earn about 5-8% more than comparable
workers in states without collective bargaining. Yes, this can mean
a higher wage bill in some cases. But it also means better lives for
public workers at the low end of the pay scale. And putting more
money in the pockets of workers is one of the best ways to create an
economy-boosting multiplier effect.
Collective bargaining can also save money. Research on the
effects of public sector collective bargaining shows that it reduces
training costs by reducing turnover, reduces corruption in government
by making people accountable to contractually defined rules, and
reduces the costs of handling complaints arising from bias and
discrimination.
Several bills to repeal NCGS §95-98 are now being considered in
the legislature. Of these, HB1583, sponsored by Wake County Rep. Dan
Blue, best hits the mark. HB1583 would scrap NCGS §95-98 and give
local units of government the option of using collective bargaining
if they so desire.
A product of a less than shining moment in North Carolina’s
history, NCGS §95-98 is overdue for repeal. It’s a law that
tarnishes the image of our state and denies the rights of over
500,000 North Carolinians who are public employees. The past may be
ever with us, but in the case of NCGS §95-98 we can nullify its power
to haunt the present.