Faculty & Staff Q&A

JEAN DICKSON, president of the Buffalo Center Chapter of the United University Professions, is an associate librarian in Lockwood Library and curator of the universitiy's Polish collection. She's worked at UB for 11 years

Q: Why did you choose to run for UUP chapter president?

A: My friends and family would like to know, too. I guess it was a combination of a sense of duty, and thinking that I could do a decent job because of previous experience in unions.

Q: What's the most important lesson you've learned as UUP president?

A: The impact of state politics on SUNY. Who is in the governor's chair, and whom he (will there ever be a "she"?) appoints to the board of trustees, all of this makes a difference that affects us all personally and intimately. If we want SUNY to continue to be a strong university, if we care about access to higher education for all, then we need to be politically aware and active.

Q: How does UUP's situation reflect the national trend regarding labor-management relations and methods of bargaining?

A: In lots of different ways. Probably one of the most important labor problems is the growth of part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs (the kind of jobs that provide careers, enough money and benefits to raise families, own homes, etc.): now about 40 percent of SUNY employees are part-timers, and they don't have the kind of voice in the university that full-time faculty and staff have. Management likes this "flexibility." There are a lot of other similarities, such as the drive toward contracting out work, downsizing, attempts to split the workforce into tiers so that the employees have less in common and can't work together well. Also, there is a trend toward "coordinated bargaining," which is reflected in the state's insistence that if all the other unions have contracting out language, we have to have it, too. Of course, UUP also works with other unions in planning its bargaining strategy, too.

Q: What is the greatest challenge currently facing higher education in general and UB specifically?

A: I guess I would call it the "corporatization" of universities. I think you can group the attacks on tenure and faculty governance, the use of adjuncts and part-timers, the push to privatize state universities, the increased influence of corporate grants in education, and the cut in public funding so as to cut corporate taxes, as all part of the problem. You can see all of this in SUNY, and at UB.

Q: What do you think of listservs?

A: They're good for quick distribution of information, but the downside is people's tendency to send out the first draft, without thinking it through. Also, on the Internet, readers can't always tell whether the writers are experienced and knowledgeable or are completely off the wall.

Q: What's the strangest request you ever received at the Polish Collection?

A: The questions are all over the map....Many relate to genealogical research, which is very interesting. The hardest questions I have had were from impoverished people in Poland who hoped that I would take up a "collection" for them.

Q: What do you think is the best thing about UB?

A: The professors who really know how to teach and inspire students. They're the core of the university. And the professional staff are the unsung heroes that keep this place running.

Q: What would you most like to see changed about UB?

A: I'd like to see the administration become more responsive and consistent. For example, we need more women in the administration. For example, few of the faculty and staff really use their right to free speech. They seem to feel intimidated. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd also change the architecture and layout of the place and move it back into the city, but I realize there's no such thing as magic wands.

Q: Is the relationship between the UB chapter of UUP and the administration similar to or different from the same relationship on other campuses?

A: Many of the other chapters have more cooperative labor-management relations than we have. Why? I suspect there are several reasons. The administration has been basically the same group for a long, long time, and the union has new presidents every two to four years, so that long-term settling is more difficult, but also the administration is set in its ways and intolerant. This is one of the largest bureaucratic organizations in SUNY. Also, on most campuses, the president's designee has direct, immediate access to the president. Here, information and responses are hard to come by.

Q: What's the most unusual job you've ever held?

A: I suppose the most unusual for a librarian is the five years I spent in a steel mill, first as a pipe-fitter apprentice, then as a laborer in the basic oxygen furnace.

Q: What similarities do you see between being a union president and playing a string instrument?

A: Hardly any. That's one reason why I enjoy playing those stringed instruments (mandolin and guitar).

Q: What question do you wish you had been asked and how would you answer it?

A: 1. Who's going to be buried under the pyramid being erected in front of the CFA? 2. Why did we go to war in the Gulf? 3. When will the recommendations of the Task Force on Women be implemented?

I wish I had all the answers....