Unionization is Inadequate Social Unity for Higher Education

In concert with mounting worker action across many industries, unionization in higher education (HE) is intensifying. Recently, some 48,000 academic workers of the University of California (UC) system endured forty days of the largest labor strike in the history of HE – to date. From UCLA to UPS, as communities struggle to find footing in these uncertain times, acts of collective protection are expected to increase in frequency and gravity.

But unionization is not the best protection for the HE community and stresses the deep deficiencies of the current higher education institution (HEI) model of universities and colleges. This post describes two socialist alternatives for providing HE that better protect not only the interests of academic labor but all stakeholders.

Socialist, Capitalist, and Unionist

By design of the HEI model, the relationship between institutions and academics is fundamentally adversarial. The UC strike revealed long-practiced exploitation of academic labor that includes unfair labor practices, bad faith bargaining, and illegal labor practices.

A classic capitalist response to the charge of labor exploitation is deceptively simple: employees are free to sell their labor to whomever they wish and employers are free to purchase labor from whomever they wish – with the terms freely negotiated. But, of course, this is rubbish. Socialist thinkers long ago dismantled this capitalist agency-freedom banner waving.

Tuned to HE, the socialist retort goes something like this: For an academic who faces the capitalist-leaning employment arrangements of the HEI model there are two options: 1) Sell your labor to the universities and colleges that own the means of production (i.e., the capitalists) or 2) Open your own HEI in the same way an entrepreneur might open a bakery (i.e., become a capitalist). Socialists have argued that neither of these describes actionable freedom for (academic) workers.

This first capitalist option is discouraged by decades of labor exploitation, persistent vulnerable (under)funding of the system, rising complements and compensations of administrators, discriminatory employment practices, employment insecurity, and more on HEI campuses. But more than that, even if academics wanted to exercise their agency to “freely” accept such terms of employment, the HEI model doesn’t offer nearly enough of these exploitative positions to meet the academic (or student) demand.

In this regard, California serves again as a shameful example of what is wrong with the HEI model. From as far back as 2012, every year tens-of-thousands of state residents who qualify and seek admission to the public California HE system are denied access because the HEI model fails to offer sufficient capacity – there are not enough classrooms, dormitories, computer labs, faculty, teaching and graduate assistants, tutors, managers, administrators, and so on. At the same time, out of fiscal desperation, institutions spend resources competing to recruit international students, establish international joint-degree programs, and open international campuses in order to collect the full exorbitant price tag of the HEI model – all of which invites continued commodification and corruption of HE, based on revenue streams that are, like public funding, vulnerable to economic, political and pandemic instabilities.

In the business world – now indistinguishable from the HE world – unmet market demand typically leads to the second capitalist option. New entrepreneurial businesses open to scoop up untapped labor and customer demand. Unfortunately, new service providers tend to be private ventures that replicate the HEI model, with explicit capitalist aim to maximize profits, at the expense of (academic) employees – not to mention, students. But more to the point, obviously this sort of entrepreneurialism is not a realistic option for the vast majority of academics who want to earn a living from their hard-earned HE expertise.

Opening a university is much more capital intensive than opening a bakery. The HEI model is prohibitively expensive for entrepreneurs, where service of competitive value requires legislative authority to issue credentials and what is essentially the license to practice HE from accreditation boards. As such, the means of production in this model are well beyond the personal wealth and influence capacity of nearly all academics. In fact, the means are even beyond the capacity of many long-established HEIs.

With the means of production owned by an institution and no reasonable hope of an individual owning an institution, the capitalist response to charges of labor exploitation relies on vacuous in-principle freedom. In contrast, the socialist claims individuals need in-practice freedom to secure an education, sustain a family, or safeguard a community. Consequently, as things stand in the HEI model, academics cannot afford to avail themselves of either capitalist option and so labor negotiations are far from free – even though students have a right to free higher education and academics have aright to earn a living in HE.

Two observations stand to complicate this analysis:

First, it will be said that academics can avail themselves of a third option that capitalists reluctantly tolerate, namely, unionization. The affinity between unionism and socialism is perhaps obvious where both aim to empower workers and limit the harm done by capitalism. However, in point of fact, the two are fundamentally distinct. Unionization democratically and collectively empowers employees to better negotiate labor conditions with employers, who, not to be outdone, have countered with their own collectives – after all, strength in numbers can serve both sides. Of logical necessity all of this is conducted from within the capitalist employment relationship, which in the end serves to legitimize capitalism.

In contrast, socialism aims to overthrow capitalism, not to mitigate the adversarial relationship between employer and employee, not to off-set the imbalance in negotiation power between capitalist and proletariat. Such capitalist tensions are non-existent where the means of production are worker (or civic) owned and democratically controlled. In dividing through by the capitalist, socialism offers real actionable freedom to (academic) workers and makes unions moot.

Second, strict characterization of public HEIs as capitalist employers is tricky. As discrete individuals under corporate law, universities and colleges receive large sums of public funding in the form of appropriations, research grants, student loan tuition, etc., which ultimately makes these institutional means of production part of the commons. So, is UC a capitalist employer that exploits academic labor or is the exploitation charge more accurately leveled against the government; or, to continue the logic, are the people who own UC in common – which includes academics and students – exploiting themselves? This is not an idle question under the current circumstances.

Such subtleties are explored in greater detail in an upcoming post that positions PSA within the social economy and compares the HEI and PSA governance models. For now, it is worth remarking that although under corporate law the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) is also a discrete individual, it neither assumes the sort of capitalist employer role that HEIs do with respect to academic labor nor the sort of service provider relationship that HEIs do with respect to students. The professional society does not employ academics, students do. The professional society does not own the means of production, academics do. The professional society does not have interests, (academic) members do.

A major problem with the HEI model is that there are too many interests that too often conflict. Among the competing interests, there is UCLA, its administrators, its managers, its academic departments, its faculty, its staff, its students, its government overseers, and its civil society owners. Be they academics, students or civil society, under the current HEI model, governments and institutions obstruct relevant individuals in their direct control of the social good of HE. The PSA model aims to obviate the need for HEIs by professionalizing the service of HE and to temper government impact by reducing the public financial burden of HE - see blog posts on American, Canadian and Australian cost reduction.

This empowers the appropriate individuals to directly provide and oversee HE in trust. Under the HEI model, universities and colleges are likewise entrusted with a measure of provision and oversight, but because they figure as an additional “individual” in the calculus, they have developed interests that are not always compatible with those of academics, students, and civil society.

Under PSA, questions about what is good for institutions are transposed to questions about what is good for individuals – and HE is better for it.

As indicated, deeper analysis of the socialist-vs-capitalist nature of the HEI model is undertaken in an upcoming post on PSA and the social economy. For present purposes, it is enough to note the capitalist-minded HEI model and its legitimization through unionization so dominates the landscape that socialist-minded alternatives are rendered invisible or implausible. It is this sort of stunted conventional thinking that thwarts efforts to improve our social circumstances.

Thankfully, outside the box there are at least two alternatives – one actual, the other possible, and each consistent with the other – that provide better social unity for HE.

 

Actual Alternative to the HEI Model

The actual is Mondragon University. Located in the Basque Region of Spain, this HEI consists of four faculties that operate as cooperatives under the parent Mondragon Corporation, which in 2019 reports just over 81,000 workers across a federation of complementary cooperative organizations in the finance, industry, distribution, and knowledge sectors, with total assets over €35 billion and annual revenue of €12.2 billion.

Academics at Mondragon University are not employees but owners. As the primary service providers in HE, academics own and operate the institution in congress with other relevant stakeholders such as students, industries, and civil community. Collectively, they make decisions about budget allocation, compensation, administration, academic programs, capital asset construction, tuition rates, degree requirements, student aid, and all other aspects of HEI operations. The result is an institution where everyone is empowered and guided by socialist values and principles of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, solidarity, honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

This is the sort of cooperative model favored by socialism, where values translate into social benefits such as income differentials that are a fraction of capitalist corporations. Mondragon Corporation allows no greater than a 7-to-1 compensation differential across its federation of cooperatives, while wage disparity in capitalist corporations is typically 100s-to-1.

In HE the differential between presidents and full professors ranges from a low of 2 to a high of 13-to-1. But because full professors are top earners at HEIs and represent only 22% of the full-time faculty, the disparity is much higher when the calculus includes full-time and part-time academic labor ranging from associate professors to lecturers to teaching assistants – many of whom repeatedly find themselves on picket lines. Disparity in the HEI model is even more blatantly capitalist when the income of college sports team coaches is compared to academics.

Obviously there is no need for unions in socialist organizations like Mondragon Corporation and its university, which more resembles the original universitates of HE than do the universities and colleges of today - see blog post Part 1 and Part 2 on the historical basis of PSA. Practicable freedom and democratic power vests workers with collective self-representation and socialist-minded stewardship of organizations – be it a bakery, a bank, or a business school.

This is decidedly not the HEI model of decaying shared governance, rigid labor divisions, wide wage disparity, and adversarial employment relations – which increasingly results in unionization and strikes that only further harm all stakeholders.

At best, unions are a welcome salve for obnoxious symptoms of capitalism, while socialism provides immunization that, when combined with PSA, stands to remedy what ails HE under the HEI model.

Possible Alternative to the HEI Model

The possible is PSA, which this blog is dedicated to explaining, developing, and promoting. For present purposes, a few features of the model are of particular relevance:

First, PSA is a professional service paradigm, as is found in iconic examples such as medical and legal services. This means academics need not be union-represented employees of HEIs, but rather members of a legislatively sanctioned profession that embodies self-representation, self-development, self-oversight, and which is ultimately responsible for stewardship of HE.

Second, academics are free to offer their services in private practice, as doctors and lawyers are empowered to do under the professional service model.

Third, like legal and medical services, users of HE services can directly hire academic providers without the need for HEI middlemen.

Fourth, given that the means of production in public HE is owned in common, if the PSA model is deemed to be in the public interest, then these means are at the legitimate disposal of its complement of professional academic licentiates. 

Finally, the acts of legislation that incorporate HEIs with the authority to grant credentials and authorize accreditation boards to license HEIs to practice HE are comparable to acts that incorporate and authorize professional societies to license, support and discipline practitioners in the provision and stewardship of service. As evidence, compare these descriptions of the State Bar of California and the University of California.  In this way, there is constitutional and functional resemblance between HEIs and the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) – though there is also fundamental difference.

These five features contour an HE sector that has no need of institutional employers or union labor representation, both of which participate in the frustration of interests and fragmentation of social unity.

Of course, it might be argued that unionization and strike action can still occur under PSA. Labor conflict simply shifts from institutional employers and academic employees of the HEI model to private practices and the support staff that professional academics elect to employ in the operation of their practices. In short, exploitation of some academic labour (i.e., faculty such as professors, lecturers, and adjuncts) is eliminated by PSA but other academic labor (i.e., support staff such as teaching, graduate, and research assistants) still face potentially adversarial employment relations with owners of the private practice means of production.

First, this criticism concedes academic labor primarily responsible for teaching, research and community service – i.e., the faculty – can better their working conditions under PSA. This is already an upgrade over the HEI model, where across the world faculty – not to mention staff and students – have had to unionize and go on strike to improve their material and working conditions.

Second, acknowledging that improvement, not perfection, should be the measure of preference, PSA can go even further to recommend itself. For instance, the PSA cost to provide the frontline academic services of HE – teaching, research, and community service – is 50-75% less than the HEI model. The liberty this affords all stakeholders to construct a new and improved HE system is extraordinary. Along with real potential for tuition-free and expense-free HE, increased research funding, and elective reliance on international tuition revenues, there is money available to better compensate academic support staff.

To more fully appreciate this financial liberty, it is important to note that the 50-75% cost reduction is calculated using only the operation budgets of HEIs, not the considerable peripheral additive costs of the HEI model associated with accreditation boards, administration of student financial aid, and bureaucracy at state and federal departments of education – all of which are substantially diminished under PSA. [A post on the real total cost of the HEI model that includes these peripherals is being researched, though with some difficulty.]

But more to the point, this cost slashing includes a private practice budget that expenses for academic support staff such as a teaching or research assistant working 15 hours per week for 44 weeks at $50-60 per hour. Though the United Auto Workers union argued during the UC strike that this is not a livable income in parts of California, it is in most other parts of America and more importantly it is income made possible in a HE system that costs 50-75% less to operate – something unionization is simply not built to provide.

Third, if the socialism inherent in Mondragon University and PSA is taken seriously, then socialist values must be explicitly stipulated, practiced, and enforced. For instance, any legislation that forms the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) must stipulate that all HE labor be full participative members of the professional society. That is, not only are professional licentiates who own private academic practices members of the society, but so are all practice academic support staff. But more than that, all students and other relevant HE stakeholders are also full participative society members. This is a state-sanctioned, socialist-minded, multistakeholder professional society in which all members equally and democratically make decisions that affect stewardship of HE – including labor conditions. There is nothing radical or untested here, as various multistakeholder cooperative organizational structures have been widely used by socialists, including the version adopted by Mondragon Corporation.

The actual and the possible alternatives discussed here are complementary and do not require the elimination of existing universities and colleges. Mondragon University (MU) demonstrates how HEIs can be converted to proper cooperative social enterprises. PSA shows how it can oblige HEI conversion to the professional service model. Further, both can coexist and collaborate with an intact HEI model, while reducing capitalist dependence in the HE system.

But with this complementarity also comes significant differences that favor PSA over HEIs, whether they be capitalist or socialist in constitution. The professional model exposes how needlessly expensive, functionally deficient, and ultimately unnecessary are universities and colleges. Expanding beyond these institutional boxes, PSA offers innovation that not even a socialist-grounded cooperative institution like MU can hope to match, including (to identify a few): i) better response to fluctuations in demand for HE; ii) better accommodation for new forms of credentialing, iii) better quality control; iv) wider community integration; v) tuition and expense-free HE; vi) elimination of international and out-of-state tuition differentials; vii) improved compensation and personal mobility for academic labor; viii) improved systemic integrity and stewardship; and ix) greater sustainability in troubled times.

 

PSA Provides Better Social Unity

Though MU is part of a larger socialist network that reaches beyond its federated parent Mondragon Corporation, it is not responsible for oversight of HE in Spain or even the Basque Region, anymore than UCLA oversees HE in America or California. Both institutions provide HE services within their walls under the ultimate authority of government-backed legislation and accreditation – without which their services are far less competitive and so in far less demand.

As indicated, PSA also requires legislation, not for the formation and licensure of an HEI (or a system like UC) that employs academic labor and grants degrees, but for the formation of a professional society with a socialist mandate to oversee HE as a multistakeholder cooperative that grants degrees and licenses individual academics to practice HE with true agency and freedom. In this way, the conflicts of interest endemic to the HEI model are avoided because neither the capitalist-leaning university and college employers nor the counter-balance of unions is required.

People tend to turn to socialist ideals and practices when times get tough, and times are getting tougher by the day. But unionism is not socialism and no one would characterize professions as socialist – though the ideals of the professional model are grounded in civil service and stewardship. While it borrows ideals, organization, authority, and trust from the origin of professions, the innovations introduced by the PSA model mean it is not a replica of the professions. Grounded in civil service and stewardship, HEIs are notably similar in origins to the professions. But, like the professions, HEIs have drifted from their social missions, forcing academics and students alike to form unions of self-protection. The trouble is that union of this sort does not provide the social unity we need in these times – PSA does.

Of course, it is an open question whether the PSA model is likely to drift from its social mission. But two things are sure from the start: 1) Even were it to drift, on a number of important metrics, the waters it navigates are preferrable to those of the HEI model and 2) as a consequence it is reckless to dismiss this possible alternative based on the sins of the fathers.

This post etches a place for a socialist-leaning PSA within the existing hierarchy, compatible with the capitalist-leaning HEI model and government lawmakers. This places PSA in the social economy as an act of reform. The next post goes further. It provides greater detail regarding the inner workings of PSA in the social (knowledge) economy and how the model can do more than reform, it can revolt.

As always, I invite comment and collaboration on development of the PSA model.