“If we have a faculty union, we’ll lose status…. ”
This myth is based on the belief that only service and industrial workers have unions, and so unionization must not be relevant to college professors. In fact, as universities are being run more like large corporations, faculties around the country are taking a new look at collective bargaining.
Today professionals are 54% of union members in the United States, and unions have raised the wages and status of their professions. (See Myth #1)
Faculty unions don’t destroy universities or their standing. The rankings of universities like Rutgers and SUNY have risen since they unionized faculty more than 40 years ago. There is no evidence that faculty unions negatively affect membership in the American Association of Universities or the rankings of research, graduate and undergraduate schools.
Note that our peers at Oxford and Cambridge, and at the University of Toronto in Canada are unionized, as are university professors in most other countries, including those at internationally ranked universities.
Campus Faculty Association 