A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms what AFT has been saying all along; unionization and collective bargaining help to increase the salaries of both blue-collar and white-collar workers on college campuses.

In "Collective Bargaining and Staff Salaries in American Colleges and Universities," Daniel B. Klaff and Ronald G. Ehrenberg of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute show that professors as well as campus workers in nine different occupations earn between 10 percent and 17 percent more when they are represented by unions.

The evidence supports the AFT’s argument that workers at higher education institutions should form unions in order to achieve better pay. "While student and faculty activists on campuses around the country may continue to press academic institutions to pay living wages to their lower paid staff...our findings suggest that a more direct way to achieve better salaries for low-paid college and university employees is to encourage them to organize and bargain collectively," say Klaff and Ehrenberg.

The authors looked at union and non-union salaries throughout nine occupations in the facilities division for 163 academic institutions.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The study may be found online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w8861. [Brian Dolber]

[March 14, 2004]