Among many items guaranteed to cause a fuss in Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to fix the troubled state budget is the inclusion of a provision that would allow faculty members in the University of Wisconsin System to collectively bargain with the university administration. Currently, UW relies on a haphazard assortment of payment structures and hiring processes for its untenured professors that rely primarily on their merit as instructors and researchers. Doyle’s plan in essence allows staff of all ranks to unionize for improved benefits.

We are unequivocally opposed to this proposal. While we are well aware of the troublingly low pay for professors at this university, we are skeptical that allowing staff members to collectively bargain will improve this situation in any way.

Firstly, collective bargaining rights will make it increasingly difficult for the university to offer higher pay packages to more qualified professors. While this may strike some observers as the result of a harshly preferential system, merit should be the first qualification of a potential instructor to enter into the university administration’s consideration. In a period of ever-increasing budgetary scrutiny, collective bargaining rights make these attractive packages harder to offer, hence putting another obstacle to attempted improvements in the university’s reputation.

Collective bargaining rights for university staff may also be damaging to the interests of students. One particularly obnoxious example is UW’s own Teaching Assistants Association, which effectively lobbied for limitations on the size of discussion sections in the classes where these sections were mandatory. As a result of this policy, students often have an unnecessarily difficult experience when applying for classes that are essential to popular majors. Participation in the TAA is also required of all TAs, which strikes us as inherently tyrannical and detrimental to the interests of individuals within the organization.

One of the main qualms of faculty other than low pay is the lack of domestic partnership benefits. This is mainly a battle for state legislators to fight; the threat of a faculty strike is neither desirable nor necessary, especially considering the Democrats currently control the Legislature.

With the governor and state Legislature are both sympathetic to faculty interests, it remains to be seen how granting this potentially crippling degree of power to faculty does much to help the faculty’s cause, as it is the Legislature, not the university, that ultimately controls their purse strings. And as the Democrats already side with faculty concerns and Republicans would likely treat a strike by faculty as a game of chicken, the move is pointless.

Simply put, if our friends at the other end of State Street can meet faculty needs, they probably will.