Employee unions can benefit women on campus.

In 2002, 42% of all union members were women, but 55% of all new workers unionized were women.

"Unions are an employee's answer to bad management," said Jean Harris, a faculty member in the political science department at the University of Scranton PA. "If management is doing a good job, the people don't want to unionize."

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Harris and Marilynn Fleckenstein, chair of the department of philosophy at Niagara University NY, work at unionized schools. Harris was the first president of Scranton's in-house union and its first female grievance officer. Fleckenstein is the president of Niagara's collective bargaining unit. Each spoke of her experiences as a woman in a union at the National Association for Women in Catholic Higher Education (NAWCHE) conference held in Rhode Island in June.

To unionize or not to unionize

Whether faculty members at private colleges and universities are eligible to bargain collectively under the National Labor Relations Act is unclear.

* In 1980 almost all efforts to unionize faculty stopped after the Supreme Court ruled against efforts to unionize faculty at Yeshiva University NY. The Court decided faculty were managerial employees, saying, "faculty authority in academic matters is absolute."