Dear Senator Vinehout and State Senate Committee on Agriculture and Higher Education members,
My name is Dennis Shaw from Menomonie and I am employed in the Student Life Services Office at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University. I also have the honor of serving as the elected Chair of our Senate of Academic Staff, one of three governance groups on campus along with the Faculty Senate and Stout Student Association.
In addition, and for the record, I am also the Vice President of the Board of Directors for ASPRO, the Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization, which has 700 academic staff employee members statewide. Academic staff professionals are the partners of the faculty inside and outside of the classroom. Academic Staff employees are lecturers, librarians, advisors, researchers, counselors, financial aid professionals, information technology staff, and housing managers just to name a few of the roles we fill.
I understand that on Monday you held a public hearing on Senate Bill 353, “relating to collective bargaining process for University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff and making appropriations.” My duties at UW-Stout did not afford me the opportunity to testify in person, so I appreciate that you have agreed to take written comments during this week.
While our campus senate is out of session until the second semester, I am sure our body will be strongly opposed to the language in Senate Bill 353, so I am comfortable relaying a letter in opposition. I have attached a resolution from the UW-Stout Senate of Academic Staff that was passed unanimously in September opposing similar enabling language in the State Senate version of the state budget bill. Our concerns with the language in the budget bill have not been addressed with SB353.
The primary reason both our campus senate and the statewide ASPRO organization opposes this language is that it specifically mandates that the faculty and the academic staff collective bargaining units on each campus would start off being separate. As stated in our September resolution, “while the language in the senate bill does provide an option to combine units, however in reality there would be little incentive for faculty or large campus bargaining units to vote to support combining with them, setting up a system where campuses, faculty and staff would each be competing against each other for limited state dollars.”
This pitting of faculty against academic staff and campus against campus for limited resources is unhealthy both for the University of Wisconsin System and the state. I grew up in a good union home with my father serving as a Committeeman for Local 95 of the UAW in Janesville. I understand that the purpose of collective bargaining and that the larger the representation the more bargaining power a union has. For the life of me I cannot understand why the legislative authors would want to start with 25 to 30 separate weak bargaining units instead of having one large combined faculty & academic staff union.
As you can see in the BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED section of our September 2007 resolution, while the UW-Stout Senate of Academic Staff would not necessarily “be opposed to the right to choose to collectively bargain, we will continue to oppose any bill including collective bargaining bills that would separate faculty and academic staff pay and benefit plans and thereby treat the 11,000 academic staff in the UW System unfairly and inequitably.”
I therefore, speaking for the UW-Stout Senate of Academic Staff, encourage the committee to either amend the language that would require separate bargaining units or vote against Senate Bill 353 when the vote is called.
Thanks once again for the opportunity to provide comments!
