Pittsburg — Faculty at Fort Hays State will vote on union representation in four weeks.
Fort Hays State University faculty are preparing for a vote on union representation Oct. 15.
Fort Hays President Ed Hammond told the Kansas Board of Regents about the upcoming vote Thursday morning. Faculty will begin receiving ballots on Oct. 1, he said.
If approved, the American Association of University Professors would represent the collective bargaining unit that would be formed.
Only one other Kansas public university, Pittsburg State, has union representation for its faculty. At PSU, faculty are represented by the Kansas National Education Assn.
If Fort Hays faculty vote union, they, like all public employees in Kansas, could not go on strike.
One of the goals of those supporting the move for union representation is the clarification of policies affecting the faculty, said the FHSU Faculty Senate president.
"You get a better quality faculty handbook," John Durham, associate professor of computer information systems, said. "Those are the rules we live by."
Saying he is not among those pushing for union representation, Durham said greater clarity in faculty rules is attractive to the faculty at FHSU.
"It gives a certain amount of legal force to the conditions under which we work," he said.
Hammond said he would work with union representatives, if that is what the faculty chooses. But, he added, a vote for a union would change the way the university is governed from the current collegial structure.
Under state law, if the faculty and administration could not agree on an issue, say a labor contract, the matter would be submitted to a fact-finder to determine the facts of the dispute. If the parties could not resolve the matter, the question would then go to the Board of Regents, which could settle the issue as it saw fit.
Durham said no one issue led to the union vote. The faculty are just trying to assert more control over their future with the institution.
"No one should have the slightest doubt, the faculty are devoted to the fundamental purpose of Fort Hays State, educating students."
-- Erwin Seba's phone-message number is 832-7145; his e-mail address is eseba@ljworld.com.
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