BGSU faculty say yes to union

10/20/2010

Bowling Green State University's faculty voted 391-293 to unionize - which means about-800 full-time tenured and non-tenured professors are to be full-fledged members of the American Association of University Professors.

The professors now have a collective bargaining unit that will negotiate for pay and working conditions and a common contract. The group had been the equivalent of a junior member of the union. The State Employment Relations Board still must certify the results.

About 85 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots by mail to SERB. The results were released Wednesday afternoon.

BGSU joins seven other Ohio four-year public institutions whose faculty unions are affiliated with the same union.

"This victory is the culmination of thousands of hours of hard work by dozens of volunteers over a two-year period," stated David Jackson, an associate professor of political science and the president of the BGSU Faculty Association. "Faculty are eager to take a more active role in shaping the direction of the university and helping to solve its problems."

BGSU leadership campaigned against the move, and asked faculty to vote against unionization. The leadership ran ads in the student newspaper and mailed an anti-union advertisement to professors.

"While we would have preferred a different outcome, we respect the process and its result," said BGSU President Carol Cartwright in a written statement released Wednesday. "... We have a responsibility to negotiate a contract that is in the best interest of Bowling Green State University."