If you were to take a poll of the climate at Quinnipiac University these days, the results would be bleak. The private institution in Connecticut, best known for its public policy Polling Institute, now has a new label: Union Buster. Earlier this year, when the Quinnipiac Faculty Federation/AFT was due to return to the bargaining table, the administration moved successfully to decertify the union. QFF has represented 240 full-time faculty at the private university continuously since 1975.

Seeing a ripe opportunity in the mostly Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board, the university went to the NLRB claiming that the faculty are managers and, under the 1980 precedent of the Yeshiva decision, should not have the right to bargain, even though they've been doing so for 31 years.

But the faculty union shall not go gently into the night. The 3,000 delegates to the 2006 AFT convention this summer approved a resolution calling for the censure of the Quinnipiac University administration, full restoration of collective bargaining rights for the faculty and, if necessary, a political and publicity campaign to win back the rights faculty lost.

Engaging in a textbook exercise in Orwellian doublespeak, Quinnipiac spokesperson Lynn Bushnell told the Boston Globe that "[i]f the AFT wants to censure someone, it should be the U.S. Supreme Court or the NLRB, not Quinnipiac." However, it was the Quinnipiac administration that filed a petition to revoke the union's charter, not the Supreme Court or NLRB.

Quinnipiac president John L. Lahey claims that faculty unions at a university create an "adversarial structure and culture." The statement ignores a 31-year history of good and productive relations with the Quinnipiac Faculty Federation.

To learn more about this assault upon faculty rights or to send a message of protest, go to http://www.shameonquinnipiac.org/.

August 29, 2006