Apparently it was a slow news day at the Wall Street Journal yesterday since they finally got around to commenting on changes to Wisconsin's higher education labor laws that happened this past summer.  Clearly, no time is a bad time to work on your gratuitous union bashing skills.

In Professors of the World, Unite? (get it?), the WSJ wonders if Wisconsin professors will be "thinkers or unionists" since unionists are clearly conformists (like all other members of democratically elected and representative organizations).  But I get ahead of myself.  Head on over the jump for a closer look at their insightful analysis.

The WSJ cites the three major elements in the Wisconsin law,  unique spinning each to draw the picture of "big labor" using its muscle to squeeze unsuspecting higher education professionals into a union.  I am going to pass on the ridiculous argument that research assistants will be pressured into joining a union (please visit an RA today if you would like to find out where the pressure in his or her life comes from).  I will also pass on the idea that a unit clarification is a process to force people into a union-I am pretty sure it is a process to ensure that those who should have been represented all along--and that the employer has worked to keep outside of the union--are afforded those rights.

But it is the end of the polemic that just grates.  WSJ claims that "Traditionally, the most prestigious university campuses have resisted unionization."  Tell that to Rutgers, Temple, the University of Vermont, the University of Florida, Florida State, the entire SUNY System, the entire CUNY system, Western Washington University, the University of Massachusetts, Wayne State University, the entire Cal State System, the University of Connecticut, and on and on.  And once you start looking at the institutions where graduate employees and contingent faculty are organized (Michigan, University of California, NYU, University of Washington, Kansas, Illinois, and on and on), you realize that unionization in public higher ed is common and growing.  More to the point, it has been for 30 years and our system of higher education is still world renowned.

Why?  Because unionization leads to equal and fair treatment of employees, not to uniformity in thinking (if you want uniformity, I suggest you check out the comments from WSJ readers).  When teachers are more secure in their work environment they are better able to work with and challenge their students.  The biggest threat to higher education is not unionization, it is the erosion of the instructional workforce in which more and more faculty members have virtually no institutional support, no job security, no academic freedom and ultimately, no professional status.  That is what unions are fighting to restore and will work for in Wisconsin.

Oh and as for the WSJ's quippy little ending-- "if UW Madison goes, expect more former free-thinkers to go over to the union mind set"-I leave you with the following quote from that famous conformist, Albert Einstein:

"I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field."

Indeed.