Last week The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article, “Will Covid-19 Revive Faculty Power?” with the subheading “The pandemic has spurred professors to organize across the country. Are they too late?”. The article provoked a spirited discussion among members of Faculty Associations across the UC system – whether we can change anything, and if so, what. Before we can even get to the question of organizational power, however, we have to deal with the question of our interests.
We are in a “contradictory class location” – caught between, on one side, an ever-more-powerful and expansive administration and, on the other side, increasingly beleaguered lecturers, an army of poorly-paid service workers, and students paying the same tuition for impoverished education. We tend to be divided and vacillating in our allegiances. Leaders of Academic Senates work to maintain our professional “guild” privileges, collaborating with the administration or cavalierly pushed aside (e.g., the Regents’ curt dismissal of objections to Chancellor search procedures). The BFA, on the other hand, though not a union, forges alliances with unions – AFT-UC representing lecturers, AFSCME representing low-paid service workers, UPTE representing professional and technical workers, UAW representing student workers.
Where are we going to stand when the savage cuts come down from above — demanding reduced hours, and compelling lay-offs among the employees who keep the university functioning? Already, departments are facing severe cuts that must come at the expense of vulnerable staff, lecturers and students, while Senate faculty, so far, remain untouched. There are departments that have followed entrepreneurial strategies, expanding staff and lecturers to cater to increased concurrent enrollments that now have diminished to zero. They have fed the university millions of dollars, but now they are left holding the bag while the administration shrugs its shoulders – the way of so many revenue-raising schemes: short-term gain, long-term losses.
That’s the issue faculty have to face – to seek short-term protection by acquiescing to the administration’s subordination of intellectually-driven programs to revenue-generating enterprises, or to undertake a long-term effort to transform the university. We know that the administrative sector of university employment has increased more than five-fold over the last twenty-five years, whereas faculty numbers have remained constant. Surely any cuts should start from the top.
Do faculty have the capacity to force the issue? Perhaps—we have symbolic capital, especially as we throw our energies into making remote instruction as effective as possible. But we are stronger when we join with our fellow workers, understanding that in protecting them we protect ourselves.
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.