Forming a Union is Key to Improving Equity and Inclusion
Among the most important motivations for our forming a union at the University of Washington is the establishment of an equal bargaining relationship to University administration to ensure that researchers have democratic decision-making power in determining the terms and conditions of our employment. This is critical for transforming higher education as a career that supports and promotes all scientists, regardless of race, gender, citizenship, financial background, or other social identities. At a time when our world desperately needs a more diverse workforce to develop science-based solutions, we cannot afford to approach this problem with anything less than urgency and purpose.
Problems at UW Reflect Broader Issues in Higher Education
As shown in the personal stories my colleagues have written documenting their own experiences with harassment and discrimination, these experiences are fundamentally predicated on unequal power relationships. These power imbalances are a key factor in the likelihood of exclusionary, harassing, and demeaning experiences occurring in our workplaces. Unions are a uniquely powerful tool for addressing these power imbalances. Our union will not only provide support to researchers belonging to systemically marginalized groups, but will also drive structural and cultural changes to make UW a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable space for all researchers. We need to organize as workers so that we can create the transformative changes necessary to make UW a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable space.
Structural Approaches to Equalizing Power Imbalances
Prior research and experience has shown the many ways that workers, through organizing unions, can drive structural changes that improve equity for academic employees. First, forming a union leads to improved pay and benefits, reduces salary inequities, and can provide specialized protections for populations facing unique challenges, such as travel bans and other threats to international researchers. Second, a union contract enables workers to bargain clearer job descriptions and opportunities to create written career development plans with their supervisors. These mechanisms serve to offer more equitable career development paths for all researchers.
In addition, forming a union increases our job security by eliminating arbitrary and at-will practices for discipline and dismissal. Collective bargaining agreements protect researchers against being fired or laid off without just cause, which reduces discriminatory job loss. When issues of discrimination and harassment do arise, union contracts can create far more fair and transparent complaint resolution processes that allow neutral third pary arbitration and elected peer representation. This means that management is no longer able to make unilateral decisions about how to resolve issues that researchers raise. Through a union we can create partnerships with administration where decisions are made as equals, including decisions about how to design discrimination and harassment prevention systems.
Evidence-Based Approaches to Prevention
Structural changes alone cannot eliminate discrimination and harassment — these changes must be coupled with the creation of an organizational culture that is focused on inclusion as well as preventing discrimination and harassment. We should negotiate a plan for a prevention-based program to involve and empower all workers to take part in ending discrimination and harassment. In contrast, most existing workshops and trainings by management address discrimination and harassment in a compliance-based way: that is, focused on the need of the institution to protect itself from legal liability or financial loss. These legalistic, top-down approaches are insufficient for preventing harassment and discrimination. They also are predicated on the notion that discrimination and harassment is a problem perpetuated by individuals, not by the work environment and culture.
Based on my own professional experience with designing and facilitating equity interventions, I want to negotiate for evidence-based approaches to the prevention of harassment and discrimination that flip management’s approach on its head, and go after the problem by explicitly addressing how to equalize the power relationship between workers and the institution through, for example, better reporting mechanisms, bargaining power, and third-party review. Policies designed to address instances of discrimination, harassment, and assault must utilize survivor-centered and trauma-informed approaches, including access to trained advocates. Equity interventions must contextualize behaviors and word choices — understanding and addressing the connections between subtle, everyday forms of discrimination and more explicit forms of harassment and assault.
As an evaluator, I know firsthand the value of assessing the impacts of interventions. Evaluation not only helps build effective programs, but also establishes the transparency and accountability that are critical for worker empowerment and rebalancing power. Through this work, we can build a culture of collective responsibility. These approaches to addressing harassment and discrimination have been initiated here at UW by the ASE and Postdoc Union (UAW Local 4121) through the Empowering Prevention & Inclusive Communities (EPIC) program. EPIC is a program that is first and foremost predicated on worker empowerment and is a direct product of unionization. This same approach must be made available to UW researchers.
If we want to maintain UW’s status as a world-class research institution, we must prioritize inclusion and the elimination of harassment and discrimination. Forming a union for academic researchers is key to equalizing our relationship with UW administration and creating a more equitable workplace.
Dr. Cara Margherio is the Assistant Director of the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE), where her work explores the social mechanisms underlying inequalities within higher education. Margherio’s research and evaluation projects examine how individuals belonging to systemically marginalized groups navigate academic institutions, as well as how individuals facilitate processes of change to improve equity and inclusion within higher education.
