Rick Perlstein has a great piece on how faculty respond to grad student unions.
He quotes at length from a letter that a professor of political science at the University of Chicago sent to graduate students in his department who are trying to organize a union there.
What always amuses me about these sorts of statements from faculty is how carefully crafted and personal they are — you can tell a lot of time and thought went into this one — and yet somehow they still manage to attain all the individuality of a Walmart circular. No union contract was ever as standardized or as cookie-cutter as one of these missives. The very homogenization and uniformity that faculty fear a union will foist upon their campus is already present in their own aversion.
Anyway, here’s what the good professor has to say: