June 24, 2008

Faculty Group Sends Detectives to Question Trustees at Their Homes

The Adjunct Faculty Association of Nassau Community College hired private investigators to quiz two members of the New York college’s Board of Trustees last week, Newsday reported today. The faculty group dispatched the detectives as part of a campaign against the hiring of non-union faculty members.

Investigators, including a retired FBI agent, questioned the trustees at their homes about alleged violations of immigration laws at the college, the newspaper reported.

Both trustees told county lawmakers on Monday that the visits had been intimidating and improper. But one of the investigators said neither trustee had complained during the interviews. —Paul Fain

Comments

1. Trustees are volunteers who are required to spend a great deal of time and energy to assure that institutions continue to remain viable and intregral to the community. Any dispute or disagreement, anyone, be it union or faculty, has should never require tactics such as this. What happened to unions and administration settling disputes in the courts or through contract procedures? It is unthinkable that a union leader would stoop to such a level. Shame on the union leader and on the union members for allowing this.

   — CATHY    Jun 25, 05:48 AM    #

2. CATHY—I understand your exasperation but don’t share it. Yes, many, even most trustees are doing generous (in more than one sense) volunteer work. But for a few it is a power trip, or an opportunity to put their pet theories about what would fix colleges into practice.

   One alternative would be for these trustees to find subpoenas in their mailboxes. I am not sure that would be better.

   — dionysos    Jun 25, 07:00 AM    #

3. It’s a clear violation of privacy. How would this sort of approach engender collaborative problem-solving on issues of concern?

   — Lagans    Jun 25, 07:53 AM    #

4. What would you rather have show up at YOUR house? A piece of paper or 2 suit clad people introducing themselves as FORMER FBI agents…DUH!!

   — cathy    Jun 25, 07:56 AM    #

5. I am surprised that the faculty union would stoop to such level. Is there any difference in labor union and faculty union?

   — Sam    Jun 25, 09:22 AM    #

6. cathy presumes way too much. Anyone can decide to let someone in their dwelling and talk to them or to say no and close the door. I’ve refused to talk to FBI agents; without a warrant, they just went away. And how do you know there were 2 of them and that they wore suits?

   — Chuck Kleinhans    Jun 25, 09:32 AM    #

7. Cathy says: “Trustees are volunteers who are required to spend a great deal of time and energy to assure that institutions continue to remain viable and intregral to the community.”

   In my experience trustees are political patronage appointees who are given license to bilk the student body of money and seize private property through the power of the state so that their own personal finances can be enriched (by using public money to build, say, a baseball stadium to entertain corporate clients).

   Every state urgently needs a public procedure by which university trustees can be impeached and expelled if the voters so desire.

   — reader    Jun 25, 10:25 AM    #

8. Aside from how and why these trustees were appointed (not relevant), they are volunteers. That role brings certain obligations and responsibilities. I have been president of an alumni association and I knew going in that there would be unusual demands on my time, and that as part of the role I assumed I could be called upon to provide information or testify in matters pertaining to the organization. While I think that the union is out of line in this case (which makes a dandy example of why many people hate unions), there is nothing very unusual about the request for information. the setting might have been unusual, but as pointed out above, the trustees could have refused the interviews or arranged for another place and time. They chose not to.

   — Al    Jun 25, 10:44 AM    #

9. This move by the local union is absolutely out ot line and it is precisely why so many in American have come to despise unions for their reliance on thuggery rather than thought, intimidation and force rather than free association and choice. Further, in our current political climate, unions are flexing their muscles hoping to reclaim some of the power they held in decades past. The trustees in question probably allowed them in out of courtesy and then felt too intimidated to ask them to leave.

   Had these individuals shown up at my door I would have thrown them – physically – off of my property, reported the matter to local law enforcement and federal authorities as an abusive and harrassing act by the union, then checked into the possiblity of state and federal legal action against the individuals who retained the investigators.

   When I was a teenager, I remember having to take food to my dad while he was locked in an office facility for the trucking company he worked for. The doors where all locked because of problems with the local union. I made up my mind then that I would never be a part of nor tolerate any of this kind of stupid, low-brow, incivility.

   Sorry for the rant but the outright hypocrisy of unions (and misnamed “Associations” in this case) pushes all the wrong buttons.

   — 2B    Jun 25, 11:48 AM    #

10. While acknowledging that these practices were not exactly exemplary, let us not forget that we have unions (and associations) to thank for the 40-hr work week, paid vacations, sabbaticals, paid holidays, sick leave, Family/Maternity leave and unemployment insurance among other things. As you bash, keep these things in mind, please. It is doubtful that employers would have voluntarily given workers any of those things without a little encouragement!

    — B.J.    Jun 25, 12:04 PM    #

11. As a former member of a faculty union, I am not in the least surprised. The tactics of intimidation that unions learned decades ago are still their default method of operation. That being said, it is each individuals’ responsibility to know and invoke their rights. All that the trustees had to do was smile and say “no thank you”, and close the door. We’re not helpless infants, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s stand up for ourselves and not cry for “someone to do something”.

    — Snake    Jun 25, 12:19 PM    #

12. B.J. (#10) has it nailed. There are massive benefits we all receive as “workers” (of one sort or another) that would never have come about without the existence of unions! Do some unions (or memberers/leaders thereof) abuse their positions of power? Certainly – but no more so than any otherendeavors (politics, big business, etc.) To add to the list of benefits, we don’t have 8 or 10 yr olds working in factories in slave-like conditions. We (for the most part) have health insurance and a retirement plan of some sort. Before anyone summarily castigates all unions & union activities, look at the history of unions and what conditions were like prior to their rise in power. Also look at what the “bosses” did in trying to keep workers under their boot heel (murder, terrorist activities, etc.). Even though I don’t belong to a union (& never have), I’m thankful that they exist.

    — Gary    Jun 25, 02:04 PM    #

13. A union seeking enforcement of immigration laws? Now I’ve heard everything.

    — john    Jun 25, 02:06 PM    #

14. John you are correct as long as the “illegal’s” are card carrying union members. Once again lets “follow the money” and the bet is it will become very clear what’s what.

    — Dr. Bill    Jun 25, 02:14 PM    #

15. My experience with the CUNY trustees in the 1990s was far worse than the account above. They regularly shut student activists out of meetings, hired private goons who roughed us up at meetings, then finally approved the formation of an armed presence on all CUNY campuses, the current security force and its SWAT team. They never hestitated to go along with the worst elements in the CUNY administration and in the city media who called for police actions on campus, and otherwise defamed the CUNY students and their families. The way they handled the Leonard Jeffries case comes to mind, with the subsequent defunding and authoritarian policy aftermath. They never cared a damn about student and faculty outrage over issues, and all hearings—when they deigned to hear us—were poorly attended cynical formalities. Yes they were volunteers, but remember these trustees in CUNY and SUNY represent policy positions, and financial interests. Most CUNY trustees in this period were bankers, and I particularly remember my own public call for an investigation of the chair of the CUNY board, James Murphy, for his bank’s involvement in student loan express programs. Sound familiar? I dislike goon tactics, but as a victim of such tactics, perpetrated by trustees and their chancellor, the disgraced Ann Reynolds, I have ambiguous feelings about the SUNY union tactics.

    — Andrew    Jun 25, 02:42 PM    #

16. Typical union thuggery.

    Unions used to use thugs to intimidate their own members. Now they are going after members of the public.

    — Bob Sarbane    Jun 27, 12:10 PM    #

17. It is interesting to read the comments. The writers appear to respond to the events detailed in the story through eyes clouded by biases created by long ago events or unrelated issues: events from fifteen years ago at CUNY damn all trustees at all institutions for (apparently) all time…trustees building (apparently unwanted and unnecessary) sports arenas for personal benefit….a father locked in his office fearing union violence. I would hope that academicians, more than most populations, would reflect their training and concentrate on this event and these facts rather than bring in extraneous issues. For me, the article was interesting in what it did not say. Why these particular trustees to the exclusion of the others? What did the faculty association aim to learn via this particular method over more conventional approaches? What was the faculty interest in illegal immigrants on the campus? Why did the trustees complain to a ‘lawmaker?’ There seems to be so much more to this story that must have occurred prior to the visits as well as afterward that seem to need telling in order to respond appropriately.

    — Sue H.    Jul 1, 08:56 AM    #

18. I love this story and the divergent views. It cracks me up. Fat cat trustees are offended because some adjuncts get creative and try to find out what is really going on. I agree that a subpoena seems less intrusive, but it would be much more time consuming in the end.

    — Rob Dawalt    Jul 1, 08:58 AM    #

19. Please Rob, don’t be so naive. These “don’t even no each other” union members didn’t cook up a “creative” idea – their union reps (external) led the most stupid of their membership into putting their names on this intimidation ploy. The last time I looked, Nassau County had a Prosecutors’ Office. If union leadership thought their were any hiring illegalities all they had to do was pick up the ‘phone and call the Prosecutor. But then, the caller/s would have been questioned and would have had to physically produce “reasonable cause” evidence to make the accusations worthy of a “real” investigation. Since “reasonable cause” likely didn’t exist, the next best strategy was to find a couple of stooges in the union membership family to do the dirty work. Now you have the “rest of the story”.

    — Bill    Jul 1, 10:21 AM    #

20. I don’t get “the big deal.” If you are in public service, you serve at the will of the public. Whether trustee or faculty. No one is above scrutiny.

    If you are asked questions about your public service, you should answer regardless of who asks. There is no crime nor impropriety in ANYONE—private investigator, private citizen, police—asking questions. Now, crimes may or may not occur when answers are coerced, by like waterboarding and such, but not when merely asked. Nothing in the story looked “over the line” like many here are whining about.

    Anyone who can’t tolerate the scrutiny is probably not fit for office.

    — darrell in dallas    Jul 1, 12:04 PM    #

21. Darrell – Get a little more experience in life, then you will “get it”.

    — Bill    Jul 1, 12:49 PM    #

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