Some thoughts on the staff strike at American University

A sizeable portion of the staff at American University, including staff colleagues at the law school, are on strike this week. I don’t have deep thoughts, just a couple of obvious observations.

First, with a few exceptions (and the same caveat could be said of faculty), staff are deeply committed to the mission of the university, to students, and to helping faculty provide great classroom learning environments. Some staff members play a bigger overall role in the university and in the education of students than some faculty.

Staff also provide/safeguard a lot of the institutional memory of the large bureaucracy that is modern university administration. Not only because there are lots of moving parts but also because a subset of long term members of such communities never bother learning the history.

Second, the @austaffunion decision to strike makes sense to me, for structural reasons as much as particularized complaints against the university leadership. I’m not involved in the negotiations at all so I can’t speak to the complaints (pay, lack of respect from the central administration) getting attention now. I also have an odd position in terms of title so I am somewhat part of the administration technically even though my role is quite limited.

Part of the opacity in employment at most places is not knowing how much others are paid nor the terms of employment. And not talking about money can be useful–it can help support the appearance of collegial equality needed for committee work, etc–even if it is a fiction. It also though covers up fault lines in ways that give power to the employer.

And I don’t know/have a stance on the relative market position of university staff positions vs. what is available in the larger market. But the reason the @austaffunion strike makes sense to me is somewhat independent of such market comparisons–even if they explain this particular strike moment.

Fundamentally, the Washington, DC area is just incredibly expensive. I lived in basement apartments, with no oven in any of them, for the first nine years I taught in DC–including three years post-tenure and with a young child. Here is a story from 2021: https://wtop.com/business-finance/2021/09/dc-ranks-as-most-expensive-place-to-raise-a-child/.  And I am in the group that is among the most privileged in higher education–a member of the faculty–which means many members of the staff experience the high cost of DC in a more real way than I ever did or ever will. Yet for the first 10 years I was at American University, I was convinced I would at some point have to move to another university just because the cost of housing is so high in DC and in many of the suburbs. [Don’t get me started on how older faculty do not understand, just as I’m sure staff know faculty don’t understand.]

It is no surprise to me that staff turnover is incredibly high given such a high cost of living. There are lots of advantages to working for a university and many of those advantages (in terms of work/life balance, mission, collegiality, etc) are very attractive for a while. And for many people, DC itself is a big draw. No wonder that in my experience the university is able to “get” such great people and hold on to them for a while before they find better opportunities.

But universities are also hierarchical in everything from decision-making authority to pay. That can be draining. There is space for upward mobility (when I think of the most talented staff, they often rise to positions of greater authority and responsibility) but it is limited.

I am not convinced a university can or will pay enough to stop staff turnover–and when I hear about staff members moving on to bigger and better positions elsewhere–I am both happy for them and confident the university can find another great person to fill that spot. And this will sound terrible to write, but unlike so many students and others at the university, I like DC but I also know there are other parts of the country. And many of those places provide a standard of living that is at least equal to that found in the DC area. The lengths people will go to live and work in DC continue to astound me and when someone leaps into the unknown of another city, or dare-I-say-it “flyover” country, I am happy for them. The same pay goes a LOT further in many other parts of the country.

But I support the striking workers both on principal (a labor-side force is needed to balance out the disproportionate force enjoyed by employers) and in this particular case. The way that the university handled the offsetting pay raises over the summer to deal with the rise in inflation was bungled and almost designed to upset staff who are part of the union. And though there is a faculty/staff divide, anything that forces the community to see just how integral staff are to the functioning of the university is good.

The tension and challenge the university face are obvious–what makes American University thrive and what attracts students is its location. But the location is also what makes salary questions so important to employees, esp. to those who stay more than a few years with the school. Telling people that many of the jobs realistically are meant to be short term might be more honest but it seems unfair coming from a large bureaucracy. While lots of promotion and hiring comes from within (something I can vouch for having seen some great external applicants passed over in favor of people who are already known), the structure is likely to only bend so far and in a time of belt-tightening such upward space is understandably more limited. The market (inflation) may be moving one way but all universities, including American University, naturally are leaning the other way, cautious in light of both the costs associated with COVID over the past three years and the precarious position that all but the most elite universities have been in since perhaps 2009.

Again, no deep thoughts but silence seemed like a cowardly choice as well. I do hope my students forgive me for canceling class this week so as not to force them to cross a picket line.