From Daniel Rosenberg and Bill Mohler (exchange)

Rosenberg,Daniel wrote:

Bill,
I am not sure why you are so focused on this productivity issue and the AAUP. I just don't follow the reasoning or why there should even be a connection? If it takes a 5% increase a year to get faculty to write more grants and papers, then they are probably in the wrong business anyway!
dwr
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From: Mohler,William
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 2:47 PM
To: Rosenberg,Daniel
Subject: Re: Uconn vs UCHC funding

The argument seems to be:

A union will protect unproductive individual faculty members from becoming uncomfortable through pressure from the administration or the faculty itself. Thus, a unionized faculty will be less purgeable of deadwood, less dynamic, and less attractive to both investors/grantors and high-ability postdocs and students. A unionized faculty would also be more likely to get locked down in hiring freezes that prevent the faculty from acting to replace extraordinarily productive faculty who bump themselves up the food-chain to other institutions (much of this has happened recently, with little or no recovery in new hiring).

I am almost certain that everyone would favor a union that gets productive faculty 5% raises each year. But many people want to be surrounded by only vigorous research programs. I think that these are the people who have voiced open objections to the idea of unionizing.

May I post this last exchange to the blog?

Thanks,
Bill