The National Center’s history dates to May 1-2, 1970, when CUNY convened a National Conference on Collective Negotiations in Higher Education at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The conference was organized following the successful negotiations of the first university-wide contracts between CUNY and its two original faculty unions. The conference began with opening remarks by CUNY Chancellor Bowker.
At the 1970 conference, University of California labor law professor Donald H. Wollett proposed the creation of a national center to conduct interdisciplinary research and publications about collective bargaining in higher education education and organize labor-management conferences and workshops.
On August 1,1972, the Board of Higher Education approved a resolution authorizing Baruch College to establish a National Center for the Study of Faculty Collective Bargaining in Higher Education. The term faculty was later removed from the center’s name. In 1980, following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva University, the National Center expanded its research and mission to include collective bargaining concerning professionals outside of higher education. The center’s name was changed accordingly to the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.
In 1972, Baruch College President Clyde Wingfield announced the National Center’s founding in a brochure distributed nationally. The brochure stated that the center’s activities would include collecting and maintaining data on collective bargaining in higher education with an emphasis on faculty bargaining; publishing a newsletter and other scholarship; conducting interdisciplinary research; and organizing conferences and workshops with for administrators and union representatives. The National Center’s inaugural Board of Advisors included university administrators, prominent AFT, UFT, and AFSCME District Council 37 leaders, labor relations agency heads, scholars, and attorneys.
The National Center was housed at Baruch College for thirty years until 2002. While at Baruch College, the National Center was led by a succession of Executive Directors: Maurice C. Benewitz, Thomas M. Mannix, Theodore H. Lang, Aaron Levenstein, Joel M. Douglas, Frank Annunziato, Douglas H. White, Victor Gotbaum, and Beth Hillman Johnson. Its activities included convening annual conferences and workshops, collecting and analyzing data about the scope of faculty unionization, and publishing a regular newsletter, bibliographies and monographs.
Since 1973, the National Center has convened an annual national conference in New York City on collective bargaining and related issues in higher education. The first annual conference took place on April 12-13, 1973 at the New York Hilton Hotel. Each annual conference has included presentations on a broad range of topics.
The proceedings for each conference since 1973 are available on the National Center’s website. In addition, audio and video recordings of conference panels and webinars since 2014 are available on the website.
Between 1973 and 1996, the National Center published a bimonthly newsletter with original research and analysis. The first edition of the newsletter summarized recent decisions and included the first version of a directory that listed existing faculty collective bargaining agents and contracts in the United States. The newsletters from 1973-1996 are available at the Booth Library at Eastern Illinois University. In 2014, the National Center resumed publication of a newsletter in a monthly electronic format and is available through a free subscription. Copies of the electronic monthly newsletters since 2014 are available on the National Center’s website
Throughout its history, the National Center has published a variety of publications. From1973 until 1997, it published bibliographies with references to books, articles, reports, and decisions on faculty and non-faculty collective bargaining issues. In later years at Baruch College, the bibliographies included references to materials on the unionization of professionals, sex discrimination and other specific topics. There are plans to digitize the legacy bibliographies to make them available again to scholars.
A central component of the National Center’s research is the maintenance and updating of data concerning faculty collective bargaining units in the United States. From 1974 to 1998, the National Center published an annual directory, which identified each institution with a faculty collective bargaining relationship, the institution type, the bargaining agent’s national affiliation, and other information. During that period, the National Center also published directories of bargaining agents for non-faculty, staff, and graduate assistants in higher education. More recently, directories were published in 2006, 2012 and 2020. There are plans to digitize prior directories since 1973 to make them available again to scholars.
Among the most common subjects at National Center conferences over the past half-century have been the substance and impact of faculty collective negotiations including its relationship to shared governance and the academic mission. Other regular subjects have been tenure, due process, academic freedom, fiscal crises and exigencies, retrenchment, and other austerity measures, along with the need for greater public support for higher education. The conference theme in 1976 was Collective Bargaining and the Fiscal Crisis in Higher Education and the theme in 1993 was Unions and Management: Working Our Way Out of Fiscal Stress. In 2000, the annual conference included a plenary titled The Coming Fiscal Crisis in Higher Education.
From its inception, the National Center has published materials and organized panel discussions on discrimination issues in higher education. Its newsletters have had articles on nondiscrimination contract provisions, affirmative action, age discrimination, and federal anti-discrimination law. For the past 50 years, the National Center’s annual conferences have had panel discussions on topics such as gender discrimination; discrimination issues in collective bargaining; equal pay; race discrimination and equity in higher education; Latinx faculty negotiations, recruitment and retention; LGBTQ issues; the interrelated histories of labor and civil rights; the Equal Rights Amendment; mass incarceration and higher education; and the Black Lives Matter movement.
In 1982, National Center’s 10th year, it convened an annual conference with the theme Campus Bargaining at the Crossroads. The 1982 conference included plenaries on legal developments and strategies for successful negotiations Other subjects discussed were the impact of unions on academic standards and accreditation and one panel on the growing reliance on contingent faculty appointments. The conference also included a review of the National Center’s first ten years by Executive Director Joel M. Douglas
In April 1992, the National Center held its 20th annual conference with a retrospective on the impact of collective bargaining in higher education. The conference included presentations on the state of unions in higher education, individual and collective rights in the academy, varying perspectives on the collective bargaining process, and an overview of legal issues in higher education.
In 2001, York College professor and former PSC leader Richard J. Boris became Executive Director. In July 2002, an agreement was reached between Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab and CUNY Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Louise Mirrer for the National Center to transfer to Hunter College with specific commitments of office space and funding. This important agreement in the National Center’s thirtieth year led to a revitalization of the National Center’s research and programming made possible by the strong consistent support from President Raab and the leadership of Executive Director Boris.
In 2009, the National Center launched its peer-review Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy, in collaboration with Eastern Illinois University. The Journal plays a key role in helping to fulfill the National Center’s research mission. Its annual volumes include research articles, op-eds, and practitioner perspectives. The theme for Volume 14, consistent with our 50th anniversary conference theme, is Learning From the Past to Enhance Our Future.
The National Center’s history is intertwined with the Taylor Law and the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). The National Center and PERB collaborated on a two-day program on collective bargaining in 1972 . Over the decades, PERB leaders have been members of the National Center’s Board of Advisors and PERB staff have presented at National Center annual conferences. In 2017, the National Center organized The Taylor Law in Perspective at 50 conference at Roosevelt House and the National Center participated in PERB’s Taylor Law 50th Anniversary Committee that organized a two-day conference in Albany.
The National Center’s 2019 annual conference attracted the largest in-person attendance in our history. The conference agenda included panels related to the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision including The History of Right to Work from the First Gilded Age to Janus, Community Colleges, Collective Bargaining, and Right to Work, and Progressive State Responses to Janus. The conference also included panels on bargaining for the common good in higher education, racial and economic equity in higher education, Title IX, sexual harassment, faculty evaluations, and negotiating first contracts for graduate assistants at Tufts and Brandies.
In 2017 and 2019, the National Center resumed its practice of convening regional programming aimed at attracting attendees unable to attend the annual conferences in New York. Both regional conferences were held and co-sponsored by California State University, Long Beach. The 2019 regional conference included panels on best practices in investigating and responding to disciplinary issues, adjunct faculty and academic freedom, academic workers and immigration status, best practices in preparing for bargaining impasses.
Continuing with its tradition of researching and reporting on collective bargaining relationships in higher education, the National Center published a 2020 Supplementary Directory of New Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education, 2013-2019. The Supplementary Directory was a compilation and analysis of data of new bargaining units, bargaining agents, and contracts in higher education involving faculty, post-doctoral scholars, and graduate assistants. The directory demonstrated that in the period of January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2019, 118 new faculty collective bargaining units in the United States were certified or recognized with a total of 36,264 new faculty bargaining unit members.
