R-MC 048

Guide to the James P. Begin Papers, 1956-1985

By Althea E. Miller and Matthew Lyons

May, 2000

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries

Finding aid encoded in EAD, version 2002 by Catherine Carey, June 2013

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State.

History of Collective Bargaining at Rutgers University

The James P. Begin Papers document the establishment and early history of faculty collective bargaining at Rutgers University. In 1970, the Rutgers faculty certified the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as their official bargaining agent. This made Rutgers one of the first four-year institutions in the United States to establish faculty collective bargaining and only the second AAUP bargaining unit in the country. The collection consists of materials compiled by Professor James P. Begin in the 1970s as part of a research study on faculty bargaining at New Jersey institutions of higher education.

The Rutgers chapter of the AAUP was founded in 1922. Like its parent organization, the Rutgers AAUP traditionally concentrated on issues of academic freedom and tenure, but during the 1960s the chapter broadened its scope and played a visible role addressing such issues as faculty salaries and benefits and university governance. By 1969, with about 25 percent of Rutgers faculty as members, the Rutgers AAUP chapter was one of the largest and most active in the US.

The first collective bargaining agreements for professional employees in higher education were established in the late 1960s, first in two-year institutions and then in four-year colleges. Faculty at different institutions selected different bargaining agents, including the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the AAUP, and independent organizations. In 1968, New Jersey's Public Law 303 authorized collective bargaining for public employees. Faculty at the state colleges quickly unionized in elections won by the New Jersey Education Association (affiliated with the NEA).

In February 1970, the AAUP won certification at Rutgers without an election, by gathering signature cards from a large majority of Rutgers faculty. Little conflict accompanied the campaign and the Rutgers administration readily recognized the AAUP as the faculty bargaining agent. By mutual consent, the AAUP and the administration defined the bargaining unit to cover all Rutgers campuses and to include all full-time academic staff members engaged in teaching or research, as well as library and extension staff holding equivalent rank. Faculty members in the Rutgers Medical School and Law School were included, although Medical School faculty soon formed their own bargaining unit when the school was separated from Rutgers and merged with other state medical and dental schools. In 1972, teaching assistants and research assistants were added to the Rutgers faculty bargaining unit.

The AAUP's certification at Rutgers took place in the context of a number of factors. Rutgers expanded rapidly during the 1960s and was transformed into a large research university. The organizational structure at the New Brunswick campus was in flux under the "Federated College Plan," a complicated arrangement intended to centralize the traditionally autonomous colleges. In addition, the state government was increasing centralized oversight of Rutgers, which had been a private institution until 1945 and retained a great deal of autonomy for two decades thereafter. All of these changes raised questions about the lines of authority affecting faculty, and faculty's relationship with the administration and role in decision-making.

By the end of the 1960s, the AAUP at Rutgers, unlike the NEA or AFT, had established itself as a prominent advocate for faculty concerns, and had developed an informal working relationship with the university administration. In addition, several writers have suggested that Rutgers faculty members favored the AAUP, based largely among faculty at prestigious institutions, over the NEA or the AFT, based largely among schoolteachers. Establishing a Rutgers bargaining unit under the AAUP preempted a possible move to include Rutgers faculty in a combined bargaining unit with the state colleges. The Rutgers administration, too, was concerned to preserve the university's autonomy and special status within the state higher education system.

The AAUP's early contracts with Rutgers were simple and brief, focusing primarily on salaries and grievance procedures. The contracts themselves were supplemented by ongoing consultations on a range of issues, with results formalized in letters or memoranda of agreement, and in University policy changes. This relationship was complicated by the administration's conflict with state agencies over who had authority to bargain with Rutgers employees, and for a time the AAUP pursued separate negotiations with both the Rutgers administration and state negotiators.

Professor James P. Begin initiated a study of faculty collective bargaining at Rutgers University in 1970, when he was an assistant research professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Management and Labor Relations. The project, part of a larger study on faculty bargaining at New Jersey institutions of higher education, lasted for several years and was funded by the U.S. Office of Education, the Carnegie Corporation, and Rutgers University. Begin served as principal investigator; several other faculty members and graduate students collaborated with him on the project at different times.

The study explored the origins and impact of faculty bargaining. It examined the reasons faculty organized, faculty expectations of collective bargaining and attitudes both before and after establishment of a bargaining unit, the historical context, internal and external forces that influenced faculty organizing, and collective bargaining's impact on educational policy, the faculty personnel system, long-term planning, and traditional faculty governance. Begin and his colleagues surveyed faculty members, conducted interviews, observed bargaining sessions, and compiled and analyzed documents. Begin continued to gather materials related to the project into the early 1980s.

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Scope and Content of the Collection

The James P. Begin Papers consist of 10.1 cubic feet of materials stored in 25 manuscript boxes. This collection spans the period 1956 to 1985, inclusively, while the bulk of the collection covers the years 1967-1974. The papers consist of materials gathered and created by James P. Begin beginning in 1970 as part of a research project on faculty collective bargaining in New Jersey. Although this grant-funded project examined faculty bargaining at a number of New Jersey colleges and universities, Professor Begin only retained the materials relating to Rutgers University, which now form this collection. A few materials on New Jersey legislation or collective bargaining at other institutions were included; these provide contextual or comparative background for understanding events at Rutgers.

The papers consist of textual records including correspondence, contracts, minutes, legislative bills and statutes, budget-related materials, newsletters, notes from interviews and meetings, press releases, court documents, grant proposals, charts and tables, publications, newspaper clippings, and articles and talks in both draft and final form. Papers, articles, notes, and drafts of papers by James Begin can be found throughout this collection.

These papers document all the components involved in Begin's research on faculty collective bargaining at Rutgers. In addition to documents collected and notes taken at meetings and interviews, the papers also include materials concerning the research design and methodology such as grant proposals, interview planning, variables, and conceptual models.

Topics covered include the history and impact of faculty contract negotiations, informal agreements outside the contract, state legislation pertaining to higher education, policies and trends, the process of establishing a bargaining unit, non-faculty bargaining units, unions, relations and conflicts within bargaining units and within management, attitudes of administration and faculty toward the bargaining process, structure and scope of bargaining, contractual rule changes, implementation of rule changes by external agencies and internal management, factions and coalitions, grievance procedures and cases, redistribution of authority, resource allocation, the University Senate and other governance structures, psychological climate, and faculty collective bargaining at other institutions and in other countries.

All of the series are arranged alphabetically by folder title. The present arrangement was imposed by the processors, but is largely based on a thematic system of file organization that Begin and his colleagues developed for the faculty bargaining research project. These papers arrived in no discernable order. Approximately half of the records had, at some point, adhered to the filing system implemented by Begin and his staff. This system is outlined in the document "Analytical Files: Suggested Organization," and can be found in Series XI (Research Study). Some of the files bore numerals and letters corresponding to categories and subcategories of the "Analytical Files" system; other files did not.

In the present arrangement, series categories I-IX duplicate the nine categories detailed in "Analytical Files." Each of these series includes both (a) files whose title bore the Roman numeral corresponding to that category in the "Analytical Files" system; and (b) files that did not bear a Roman numeral, but whose contents were judged by the processors to fall within that category. Within each series, all materials that bore a subcategory label have been grouped together under the subcategory's title. Materials that did not bear a subcategory label have simply been included under the general series. The original order of the subcategories are not followed in the current arrangement. Series X-XV are artificial categories created by the processors as a way to organize files that did not fit into Series I-IX.

In several cases where publications were found whole and without notation, they were removed from the papers and placed into the Special Collections general collection for greater access.

These papers are restricted in access due to the confidentiality issues involved in individual faculty grievance cases. While much of the confidential material has been removed and destroyed, more materials of a questionable nature still reside in the papers.

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Arrangement Note

The Begin papers are arranged in the following fifteen series:

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Name and Subject Tracings

Personal Names

Corporate Names

Subjects

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Bibliography

Begin, James P. "Faculty Bargaining at Rutgers University. "Paper delivered at the University of Chicago, November 1971.

Begin, James P., Theodore Settle, and Paula Alexander. Academic Bargaining: Origins and Growth. New Brunswick, NJ: Department of Research, Institute of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, 1977.

Carr, Robert K., and Daniel K. Van Eyck. Collective Bargaining Comes to the Campus. Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1973.

Epstein, Leon D. "Governing the University: The Campus and the Public Interest. "San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1974.

Garbarino, Joseph W., with Bill Aussieker. Faculty Bargaining: Change and Conflict. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975.

Lee, Barbara Anne. The Effect of Faculty Collective Bargaining on Academic Governance in Four-Year Colleges and Universities. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1977.

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Detailed Description of the Collection/Container List

List of Abbreviations

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