Financial & Compensation Claim Fact Checks

Perhaps the biggest driving factor we hear from UAOU organizers is how unionization will help drive raises and compensation. Unfortunately, in real dollar terms, unions have made many faculty worse off. Take a look at the evidence and decide if you can afford the cost of what a union brings.

UAOU Claim: "If OU unionizes, you and your colleagues can expect to do better in terms of pay!"

Fact Check: False, union contracts often take years to negotiate and have left many members at peer schools at best even to what they were getting and in many cases worse off.

The Facts: The only thing you should expect if OU unionizes is a drawn out negotiation for a first contract that will likely leave you worse off financially. There will be no raises or changes in compensation while a contract is being negotiated. Nationally, collective bargaining units have a 25% failure rate to achieve a contract after three years of negotiations. Success within year one is only 52% (Source: Economic Policy Institute). Do you want to stake your family's future on the flip of a coin?

But let's go further and assume a contract similar to peer schools. How good are these contracts? You be the judge:

An image displaying minimal pay raises for unions at: Cleveland State University, University of Akron, University of Cincinnati, Bowling Green State University, and Kent State University. The raises ranging from a flat $1,000 increase to 1.5%- 2.5% total.

Based on these peers, faculty must pay .75% to 1% of their earnings to receive a 1.5% to 2.5% raise. If it takes longer than a year to negotiate a contract you and your families will most certainly be worse off financially. For example: at Miami University the AAUP-AFT backed union is going into year two of negotiations with no end in sight and no contract. No contract means no raises.

UAOU Claim: "While compensation at unionized universities is higher than at non-unionized universities, salaries at a given institution do not go up in lock-step. Contracts often specify salary floors for faculty, but not salary ceilings. If you look at collective bargaining contracts across the country, you’ll see that merit raises are usually part of the contract. Contracts also establish processes for addressing compensation inequities and for offering competitive salaries to hire and retain strong faculty."

Fact Check: Misleading, some members of the union are better off, many are worse off when factoring in union dues.

The Facts: UAOU refuses to acknowledge that unionization drives wages to regress to the mean and compress salaries overall. In fact, "there is supporting empirical evidence that unions flatten the
distribution of wages across skill groups" (Source: Wage Distribution Impacts of Higher Education Faculty, Wassell Jr. et. al.). Colleagues across higher paid disciplines (for instance: engineering, health, business) should yet again expect to be financially worse off both when factoring union dues and salary compression.