The Impact of Unionization on University Performance: A Cross-sectional Time Series Analysis

Abstract

In 1968 the union movement in higher education was launched on the CUNY campuses in New York when CUNY held the first academic labor union election on an “integrated, heterogeneous, multi-campus system” (Ladd and Lipset 1973). In the nearly five decades since that historic election, unionization has grown to cover more than a third of all public four-year institutions and 40 percent of faculty at those public institutions (see Figure 1). While unionization is more common at larger institutions, Figure 1 illustrates that even among the smallest public institutions, unionization has increased over time.