KU faculty and staff are among Kansas’ lowest-paid. Is unionizing the solution? | Opinion

It’s been a big year for union power in America.

Hollywood has been shut down by striking writers and actors. Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers have also been hobbled by worker walkouts. The industries are wildly different, but the union aims are more or less the same: better pay, improved working conditions and a say in shaping the future.

That sounds familiar to Sheyda Jahanbani.

She is an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas — and a member of the organizing committee for UAKU, or United Academics of KU, which aims to represent faculty and academic staff on KU campuses in Lawrence and Johnson County.

“We are, of our peer institutions, among the lowest-paid faculty,” Jahanbani told me. “Even though KU has been building new buildings, the existing facilities that many of us teach and research in have been, really, in pretty disastrous decline, as the university has not been able to really devote resources to actually keeping things up and running.”

Those challenges need “more faculty voice, rather than less, because we’re the ones who really are in the trenches.”

Faculty unions aren’t new to Kansas — they already exist at Pittsburg State, Fort Hays State and Johnson County Community College.

But the latest effort is still interesting, for several reasons.

For one: KU is the state’s flagship university, meaning it has both a larger labor force and a higher profile than those other institutions. And the unionizing movement arrives during a critical moment for higher education nationally, when colleges are still dealing with fallout from the pandemic while also bracing for the effects of a national baby bust that will produce fewer tuition-paying students.

KU just welcomed the largest freshman class in its history, so the bust isn’t a problem here quite yet. But you don’t have to look far to see other ominous signs.

Another Big 12 university, West Virginia, just announced it is dropping dozens of majors and cutting more than 100 faculty positions to deal with a budget shortfall. And an hour down the road from Lawrence, Emporia State University is struggling with its own enrollment after firing a number of tenured faculty last spring.

“A lot of us are really concerned about where KU is headed,” Jahanbani said. Faculty members just “want to be part of making sure this is a healthy and viable public institution of higher ed for the people of Kansas and for people throughout the region.”

So the process moves forward. UAKU last month announced a majority of faculty had signed cards in support of the union, triggering a likely election that could take place by the end of this semester.

The administration isn’t offering much comment on the process.

“University of Kansas leaders look forward to continued conversations with faculty, staff and students about ways to move the university forward,” a KU spokesman said via email. (Full disclosure: My wife and I have both done editing and writing work for KU. Neither of us is affiliated with the union.)

It isn’t lost on Jahanbani that Kansas is a red state whose mostly Republican leaders have long disdained labor unions — or that universities have become flashpoints in conservative-driven culture war dustups over “wokeness” and so-called “critical race theory.”

“The majority party in the Legislature has been pretty skeptical of what universities do,” she said. Still, “I’m not worried about a particular backlash because we unionize.”

UAKU isn’t looking for conflict, Jahanbani said. That can happen: Rutgers University in New Jersey endured a weeklong strike last spring before faculty members ratified a new contract.

Instead, she said, faculty want a “partnership with the university where we do have a real voice.”

The idea is to help a union strong Jayhawk Nation the best possible version of itself.

“A flagship university like this should be a crown jewel in a state like Kansas,” Jahanbani said. “And I think that’s what we can become again.”