New AAUP affiliate fights for faculty rights

The Manhattanville Faculty Alliance (MFA) lost a bid for collective bargaining rights last year when a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that faculty at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, are "managerial employees" and thus not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Although disappointed, MFA members reacted not by disbanding but by forming themselves into a non-collectivebargaining faculty advocacy organization, which is jointly affiliated with the AAUP and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. The new organization is the first to have been created since the AAUP and NYSUT agreed in 2001 to join forces to organize faculty at campuses in New York.

"We formed the alliance because of a desire for a stronger faculty voice," says MFA president Anna Gandolfi, a professor of economics. Under the current faculty governance system, she explains, faculty committees make recommendations to the administration, which often are not followed. The MFA, funded by dues and with financial and logistical support from the AAUP and NYSUT, plans to bring speakers to campus and bolster the faculty committees' access to data and expert advice. One issue of concern to the MFA is the faculty handbook, which omits specific discussion of faculty benefits and other important topics. Alliance members are also concerned about faculty workload and a lack of adequate facilities and support services. The MFA has already put in place several key ingredients for a faculty organization: a constitution, which was ratified in December 2001, a dues structure, and officers.

It's a testimony to the need for such an organization that the MFA has enrolled 40 percent of the college's permanent full-time faculty before ever having an enrollment drive, says Gandolfi. She stresses that the alliance is not interested in supplanting current faculty committees but in supplementing their efforts. "We feel that the current system simply is not able to address certain issues," she says.