From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Faculty Union Uses Web as Tool in Labor Dispute (Chron of
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 09:14:22 -0600
A Faculty Union Uses the Web as a Tool in a Labor Dispute
By KELLY McCOLLUM
Some Pennsylvania professors have created a distance-education course that
they hope teaches skills their students won't need to use: PK101 --
"Introduction to Picketing."
The on-line tutorial, which is intended for the professors' colleagues and
which offers tips on protest etiquette, is one way that faculty members in
Pennsylvania have used the World-Wide Web to organize -- and prepare for a
possible strike -- during their year-long contract negotiations with the
state system of higher education.
As of late last month, the state system and the Association of Pennsylvania
State College and University Faculties had reached a tentative agreement,
making a strike unlikely. But the union's on-line organizers say their
experience has demonstrated the Web's usefulness to the labor movement.
Steven F. Jackson, an associate professor of political science at the
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, created a Web site earlier this year for
his union chapter. It provides information about the negotiations from the
perspective of the union and has helped, he says, "to rally the troops"
(http://www.iup-apscuf.org/).
Some professors and union leaders at the state system's 13 other campuses
have posted Web pages of their own, but Mr. Jackson's site became an
unofficial headquarters for the statewide effort. "I've gotten e-mail from
students and faculty all across the state saying the Web page was absolutely
essential for keeping morale up and keeping students current," says Mr.
Jackson. Students, who he says have been caught between the administration
and the faculty in the dispute, are one of the site's main audiences.
"The students are very frustrated that nobody is telling them any good, hard
information. The state system's Web page frankly doesn't give them any help,
the [union's] state page doesn't deal with that, so I decided to become
rumor-control central."
In late September, when the professors' union voted to authorize a strike --
although not actually to start one -- rumors spread that the authorization
was higher education's equivalent of the 48-hour warning required in some
public-school districts before teachers there can strike.
That belief, as explained on the site's rumor-control page, was false --
"much to the disappointment of some of the students," as Mr. Jackson puts
it. "They thought we were going on strike and didn't have to study for their
tests the next
day."
Like the picketing course, much of the site focuses on practical information
for professors. The picketing course, for instance, offers tips about what
to wear to a picket line, how to handle questions from reporters, and how to
deal with people who might try to cross the picket line. It advises
professors not to bring their children to the line, and to leave
pocketknives, baseball bats, and other potential weapons at home.
The Web site also helps faculty members prepare for a strike, encouraging
them to take their teaching materials home with them, to begin using a
non-university e-mail address, and to arrange for care of laboratory animals
and of continuing experiments.
But perhaps most intriguing is the union's recommendation that professors
remove all of their distance-education materials from the university's
server.
Some professors feared that, during a strike, administrators or replacement
instructors might be able to use on-line courses to teach students in the
professors' absences.
Opponents of distance education have cited similar fears, worrying that
on-line courses could allow institutions to use the work of one professor to
teach hundreds of course sections to students around the world. "I'm not
going to sit back and watch some administrator try to run my course off of
my work," says Mr. Jackson.
Those worries may be moot for the time being. But Kenn Marshall, a spokesman
for the state system, says state officials had no intention of using
administrators or replacement instructors in the event of a strike. "We
would just teach the courses we could with the remaining faculty."
The state system has also been making use of the Web to spread information
about negotiations. The system's home page (http://www.sshechan.edu/) and
the pages for various campuses have offered bargaining updates. "We're using
the Web to a great extent to make sure everyone knows what we have on the
table and what the faculty have on the table," says Mr. Marshall.
With the danger of a strike apparently past, Mr. Jackson says he will
maintain his Web page, which now offers details about the agreement. He says
he may also post an opinion poll on the site to see what professors think of
the agreement. Union leaders will vote in mid-November on whether to accept
it.
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Copyright 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education