Do the Muses Need Or Want a Union?

The Wall Street Journal
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Page A14

Regarding your editorial "Professors of the World, Unite?" (Oct. 17): I have my Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I believe that unionizing the UW faculty would severely and permanently damage the university. Here's what the faculty might expect in a unionized world: (1) seniority would trump achievement when determining faculty compensation, (2) many high-profile faculty at nonunion
universities around the country would never consider employment at UW, and (3) the university's decisionmaking process would grind to a near halt, stuck in the molasses of union bureaucracy.

More broadly, I fail to see why any competent professor would want to be part of a union. Competent professors have the research and teaching accomplishments to make them marketable and mobile, and thus protected from bad administrators or misguided universities. With the protection of mobility already in place, why would competent professors want or need a union, especially when the union may produce the damaging effects listed above?

UW faculty, be very careful what you wish for.

Dana R. Herman
Kennesaw, Ga.