February 4, 2022
After many, many decades of relentless attacks on their right to unionize, the American work force is floundering in the throes of unchecked inflation (aka price gouging). An overwhelming majority of individual workers are on their own to negotiate the best possible deal with an employer, and it rarely turns out that the employee is benefitting more than the bare minimum needed to sustain one’s life. However, the few unions that remain have been able to do so because they have demonstrated that “normal life” will encounter substantial problems for social order if the workers go on strike. One example can be found in professional sports. Perhaps because the player pool is truly global — drawing upon those born in Lithuania as well as Korea — baseball has a players’ union (MLBPA) able to demand at this point what most certainly are significant gains for the players. Let’s take a look at how negotiations stood a little over a week ago:
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-mlbpa-cba-talks-progressing
One day after the MLBPA recently rejected the league’s proposals that included significant increases in pay for players with two-plus years of service time — a plan that included the best players earning even more in bonuses based on performance — MLB (the owners of teams) returned with a proposal based on a framework initially presented by the MLBPA, according to a source. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure out which side is caving in, albeit reluctantly, and which side is winning the negotiations. The owners know that spring training needs to get started soon, and if the game as an international spectacle is to continue to flourish, it is time to remunerate the players appropriately.
Unfortunately, the California Faculty Association (which represents those teaching in the California State University system) is clueless about how to negotiate, and instead of using their position of strength to do what they really claim to have done — “to have made significant gains in ALL areas” of a new contract — they have settled for what the Chancellor’s Office offered after the CO realized that it had stalled long enough over the past two years, and that the fact-finding process which would soon commence was not going to turn out in their favor.
Yesterday, the results of a vote by CFA membership on whether to ratify the new contract were announced, and 95 percent of the voters said “Yes.” I understand why adjunct lecturers, who make up 70 percent of the union membership, agreed to the deal. Like minor league baseball players, they are vastly underpaid and a large portion of them barely survive from semester to semester, though it should be said that many do have long-term contracts. Lecturers had every right to vote “yes,” and for their sake I’m glad the contract passed.
However, I voted “NO,” in large part because I object to lies or statements that can be parsed to “explain” what is really meant by a “feel good” deception. The CFA claimed that it made “significant gains in ALL areas.” The union did NOT negotiate a contract that made “significant gains in ALL areas.” I always warn my students to avoid absolutes in claims, and this is a good example.
“All areas?” I didn’t see a single word in the new contract that increases the number of sabbaticals for professors. Supposedly, CSU Long Beach is a “teaching-intensive, research-driven institution,” but the College of Liberal Arts has had the research time available to its professors REDUCED over the past 15 years, not increased; an increase in sabbaticals would significantly impact and enrich not just the lives of professors but of the students they teach. However, very few lecturers get sabbaticals, so the CFA asks itself, “Why should we make this a bargaining point?”
“All areas?” Did I somehow miss an announcement that the length of time that a professor can be in the FERP (Faculty Early Retirement Program) has increased from five years to seven years? I did not miss any such announcement, because there was no gain in that area. I will need to work as long as possible, and could have used a boost in that area.
What the CFA meant by “all” areas, of course, was just a narrow set of concerns that largely ignored my needs as a scholar and creative writer who remains economically mired in the working class. It’s obvious that five out of six of tenure-track and tenured professors in the CSU system are most likely ensconced in the middle-class, since that is the likely percentage of those at that professional rank who affirmed the contract. I say to them, “Enjoy your class chauvinism. And feel free to pay for your privilege of a union that is in lockstep with a bureaucrat who said to a group of newly hired professors at CSULB in 2006, “When one has a Ph.D., class is no longer a relevant issue.”
Bullshit.
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The baseball players’ union knows that the time to use its clout is now, and it continues to show the ruling class who has the upper hand. The owners of the teams are so worried that they have requested that a federal mediator assist them in resolving their “differences” with the MLBPA. The players know very well that the job of a mediator is to get both side to agree to a compromise. But why should the players compromise, since what they want is perfectly fair and equitable? Why should the players’ union dilute their demands? If the owners had the upper hand, do you really think they would give in at all? The fact that the owners asked for a federal mediator underlines just how desperate the owners are getting, and there is no reason for the players to let up on the pressure now. If you are leading a baseball game, 9 – 3 in the bottom of the fourth inning, and you have the bases loaded with no outs, and your best hitter at the plate, with your second best hitter in the on-deck circle, you don’t say, “Oh, don’t try very hard. Look at the score. We’re winning.” No, you hope your hitter hits a ground-rule double, and the next hitter gets a triple. That would make the score 13-3, with a runner on third and no outs.If only the CFA had the same gumption!
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-requests-federal-mediator-in-negotiations-with-mlbpa
About Bill Mohr