A Case Study of Threats Against a University-Based Labor Education Program: A Personal Remembrance

Introduction

Historically, university- and college-based labor education programs have often rested uneasily within their host institutions. Since Labor Studies is not a traditional higher education discipline such as psychology, history, sociology, a “hard” science like chemistry or physics, or a standard arts and humanities discipline, it has always been “interdisciplinary” and thus not deeply rooted in the history of higher education. Like African American Studies or Women's Studies, most Labor Studies programs are a product of pressures in the post-World War II period or in the 1960s to open higher education to those traditionally excluded from the academy. There definitely are exceptions such as the storied School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin, which existed long before World War II. In the few places where they existed, such programs usually existed thanks to the influence of early pioneering industrial relations scholars such as John R. Commons. But for the most part, Labor Studies programs in institutions of higher education were an extremely rare phenomenon in pre-World War II America.

In the early part of the twentieth Century prior to the 1930s, most labor education not done by unions themselves was carried on by independent centers and labor colleges (as noted above, there were exceptions). Often displaying a “social reconstruction” and/or leftist political orientation, such programs were generally viewed with suspicion by national labor leaders in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). These programs trained important labor intellectuals and organizers who played a prominent role in the organizing upsurge by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s. But the overall attitude of labor leaders toward universities and colleges and any labor education programs they may contain was one of suspicion (Rogin and Rachlin 1968).

Following World War II, some land-grant and public universities established worker or labor education programs in the late 1940s or 1950s. Despite this, the overall attitude of organized labor leadership was still suspicious of these developments (Rogin and Rachlin 1968). By the 1960s, the AFL-CIO Education Department began to be more proactive by developing programs of its own and emphasizing staff training to “professionalize” union personnel in their dealings with increasingly educated and professional management counterparts.

By the 1970s and 1980s, university and college labor education became more widespread and accepted within the labor movement. A 2003 report on the state of labor education summarizes the changes during this period:

Labor education grew at the university and college level, especially in the area of credit labor studies and degrees for unionists. The change was welcomed by many union staff members who aspired to credentials that would acknowledge the value of their work and life experiences. The 1980s was a time of growing legitimacy for university and college labor education. Some programs disappeared and some new ones emerged, but most stabilized during this period. Their stability rested on improving relationships with organized labor in their particular regions as well as adjustments they made to maintain their status in the academy. . . and labor education became a more accepted element of union life and culture. (Byrd and Nissen 2003, 89)

The Indiana University Division of Labor Studies (IU DLS) in the 1980s and 1990s

When I joined the Indiana University Division of Labor Studies (IU DLS) in 1981, it was one of the larger university-based programs in the United States. Approximately a dozen full-time faculty were spread across six regional campuses of Indiana University. A very robust non-credit program provided both open enrollment (open to anyone for a small registration fee) and contract (specifically contracted by a particular union and paid for by that union) classes in most of the larger cities in the state where there was any significant union presence. Active Labor Advisory Committees composed of local labor leaders met regularly in each region and advised IU DLS faculty of what open enrollment classes and conferences to hold in the coming months. These advisory committees also helped publicize the program and to build attendance at one-day conferences or multi-week one-night-a-week classes. The IU DLS also had college credit programs with quite limited enrollments that led to Associate and Bachelor degrees in Labor Studies on five campuses.

The Indiana labor movement was quite large due to extensive auto and steel plants in the state, and despite the generally Republican nature of the state, it had a fair amount of influence in state politics. Virtually, all Democrat and some Republican politicians in the state relied on organized labor for support to get elected. The entire reason for the sizable Labor Studies program at Indiana University was that organized labor had worked to establish and support and grow the program. While not providing exactly a favorable climate for a university-based labor education program, the state was more hospitable to the IU DLS's existence than was true for many similarly conservative/Republican states, simply because of the size of its labor movement.

What Caused the Controversy

After being hired by the IU DLS in 1981, I was located on the Indianapolis campus of Indiana University (known as Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis—IUPUI—because it was also a regional campus of Purdue University). I was responsible for programming in the state's east central region with noncredit programming in the region's cities such as Anderson, Muncie, New Castle, and Richmond, as well as a very small credit program at a regional campus in Richmond.

In the Fall of 1984, my regional Labor Advisory Committee in Muncie asked for a one-day conference on attempts by employers to prevent, weaken, or destroy unions among their employees. To me, this seemed like a routine request, and I proceeded to set up a program in Muncie on Saturday December 8 titled Union Busting and How to Fight It. We held the program at the Ball State University campus in Muncie and attracted about 50 union leaders and activists. I did not consider this to be anything unusual or worthy of special notice.

But the Muncie newspaper took an interest and ran articles on it the day before and after the conference occurred. A December 7, 1984, article in The Muncie Star titled “Union Members to Hear about ‘Union Busting’” quoted me at some length, including the following statements:

“There is a hardening of attitudes against labor unions,” said Bruce Nissen of IU's Division of Labor Studies in Indianapolis. “The norm is union avoidance and weakening and busting.” . . . “Union busting seems to be a very important issue in the Muncie area,” Nissen said. . . “Industries have decided unions are so weak today that they can directly confront the unions, take them on and get by with it,” Nissen said. “It all comes down to costs and greater flexibility [for employers] in the end”. (Francisco 1984)

But the end of the article begins to steer the focus of attention to possibly controversial territory:

The IU Division of Labor Studies is openly partisan.

A Muncie Star article the day after the conference titled “Prof Teaches Unionists How to Fight Back” related some of the content of the program. It described different techniques of union busting and the changed atmosphere since the post-World War II years where labor and management had reached something of a begrudging acceptance of each other with relatively civil labor-management relations and negotiations. It quoted me on management's newer harsher more antiunion attitudes:

“Now,” Nissen said, “We’re almost back to the warfare of the 1930s. The semi-understanding that we had has been broken.” . . . “It's a decisive change in managements’ attitude,” Nissen said. “In their secret heart of hearts, they’d really like to be rid of unions for good”. (Schwartz 1984)

At this point, neither I nor the IU DLS as a whole had any inkling that controversy was coming. We simply considered the Union Busting conference as one part of an ongoing program to assist the Indiana labor movement in surviving and thriving, in line with our mission.

The Backlash and the Threat

On January 3, 1985, Jeff Espich, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Indiana state House of Representatives, wrote a letter to the President of Indiana University, John Ryan. Its opening paragraph summarizes the reason for the letter:

I was most disturbed to recently come across an article from The Muncie Star dated Friday, December 7, 1984. The particulars of that article were regarding a professor from the IU Campus in Indianapolis who was visiting the Muncie area. (Espich letter 1985)

Mr. Espich briefly describes my efforts to aid area unions in combating union busting and states, “it is certainly inappropriate for a public university to be sponsoring a department and/or professor whose job it is to engage in such tactics.” He continues:

Let me cite a quotation from this news article by Mr. Bruce Nissen, the professor involved from your IU Division of Labor studies. The quotation states, “We are not neutral. We exist to serve unions.” I really cannot believe that this is happening in our state universities today. Yet, the evidence seems clear. (Espich letter 1985)

The capstone of the letter is a threat to potentially cut back on funding to IU unless the university took action to curb or eliminate my and the IU DLS's activities:

Quite frankly, I have been of the opinion that it was appropriate for us in Indiana to find additional funding for higher education. . . Yet, if there are sufficient funds in your budgets to engage in such tactics in those departments as I have just described, then you already have too much (emphasis added).

To its credit, the leadership of IU did not convert these external threats into internal threats aimed downward at the IU DLS. Instead, on January 7^th, the president's office forwarded to Lee Balliet, the Director of the IU DLS, Espich's letter with a note stating, “Please prepare a reply, for the President's signature. Would like to have a reply within a week.” Ballet drafted a letter for President Ryan to sign that contained no apologies of any sort: it provided the legislator with a copy of the IU DLS Mission Statement, informed him of the existence of both statewide and area labor advisory committees that guide programming, assured him that the IU DLS was considered one of the best university-based labor education programs in the nation, and only then addressed the particular program and complaint that prompted Espich's original letter.

On that subject, the responding letter referred the legislator's attention to a recently published report by a U.S. House of Representatives committee entitled “The Failure of Labor Law—A Betrayal of American Workers” which detailed the widespread tactics—both legal and illegal—by management in union avoidance. The proposed letter continued, “Of particular concern to me is your implication that teaching union leaders how to cope with illegal actions on the part of their employers is somehow ‘anti-business.’ . . the IU labor studies program cannot be deemed anti-business simply because its mission is to train union leaders in the exercise and protection of their rights under the federal labor laws.” (Balliet letter to Espich draft 1985) It concluded with a statement that in a competitive society with divergent interests, IU had a responsibility to serve all of those interests and respectfully rebuked Espich's threats and demands to clamp down on the DLS:

In sum and in response to your final comment in regard to the adequacy of funding for higher education the State of Indiana, I hope you are not implying that our endeavor to serve the legitimate interests of all Indiana citizens somehow distracts from our worthiness and as an institution of higher education. To the contrary, allow me to suggest that the very issue over which you have raised objections lies, in principle, at the heart of Indiana University's continuing quest for excellence in teaching, research, and service for all of those to whom we are educationally responsible. (Balliet letter to Espich draft 1985)

That outright repudiation of the legislator's opinion was apparently too much for the IU President to feel comfortable signing, so he asked Balliet to sign the letter himself, which he did on January 25 (Balliet letter to Espich 1985). At this point, we were unclear if Espich's letter was simply a one-time outburst by a conservative Indiana politician (perhaps goaded by behind-the-scenes business interests that were offended), or if it was the opening salvo it what could become a much larger and prolonged battle. Indiana University leaders instructed the university's main lobbyist at the statehouse to take Espich out to dinner to discuss university priorities and issues. The lobbyist was instructed to give Espich every opportunity to raise the issue of the union-busting conference, but Espich never brought it up. It appeared that without compromising or retreating from our mission to train union leaders in institutional survival we had avoided serious danger to our program.

A few months later, I made a presentation at a conference of the University and College Labor Education Association (subsequently converted to the United Association for Labor Education). As I recall, not one other college- or university-based labor ed program with someone in attendance had faced a similar attack, as none had offered a program on union busting. Most expressed an unwillingness to “poke the bear” as well as a fear that offering a program like this could be dangerous or maybe even suicidal. Clearly, circumstances varied from labor ed program to program; the IU DLS was either braver than other programs or was in a stronger position to teach such controversial material compared to most.

A June 1985 two-day conference at the IU Fort Wayne campus titled “From Union Busting to Union Building” drew enormous labor attendance of 165 people. The IU Fort Wayne faculty member, Mark Crouch, held a press conference which resulted in a major article in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (Evanoff 1985). Predictably, this conference also generated unhappy letters of protest to the president of IU and the Director of the IU DLS. One was a cartoonishly uninformed and barely literate complaint to the IU President from a dentist whose last name was Derrow. This letter mistitled the conference, referred to Mark Crouch as “Mike Crouch,” and stated that state funds should not be used to tell or explain to unions how to “arbitrate” with management. It added, “There seems to be enough corruption in unions (the records speak for themselves) that we should not be agitating.” Whatever that last sentence means, the letter also expressed confidence that a lot of industries will “stop their contributions to I.U. because of such a conducted course” (Derrow letter 1985). The ignorance exhibited by this letter is breathtaking. Once again DLS Director Balliet was asked to respond. Among other things, in his letter to Derrow, Balliet stated:

Perhaps you are unaware that most workers in the United States have a legal right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. In fact, the stated purpose of the laws guaranteeing and protecting this right is to encourage the practice of collective bargaining as essential to stability and progress in our society.

A more serious and more conciliatory letter to Director Balliet himself (rather than over his head to the president of Indiana University, where previous letters went) was from Art Liley, President of the Spicer Axle Division of the Dana Corporation. This letter conceded (again, unlike previous letters of complaint) that a variety of viewpoints concerning labor-management relations was acceptable and desirable, but it complained that DLS faculty member Crouch was teaching Fort Wayne employees that Quality Circles, Participative Management, and the like were antiunion in nature. It claimed that such measures were absolutely necessary for the survival and competitiveness of American manufacturing and asked that both sides be presented regarding their benefits or harms for U.S. workers and their unions. The letter decried adversarialism and claimed that the real adversaries were producers outside of the United States (Liley letter 1985).

Director Balliet's letter of reply was more conciliatory, in keeping with the nature of the letter he received. He assured Liley that Professor Crouch was not saying that all management efforts at quality and productivity improvements were designed to weaken the union—only that they could be used in such a manner and some of them were. He suggested that Liley contact Crouch so the two of them could discuss their views, as he was certain that Crouch would be interested in such an exchange (Balliet letter to Liley). Unlike previous letters, within the IU DLS Liley's letter was not seen as a direct attack upon our program or an attempt to undermine us.

Political attacks on the IU Division of Labor Studies then died down for quite some time. However, nine years later in 1994, we again were the target of a hostile attack letter to a new Indiana University president, and once again I was the IU DLS faculty member named in that attack. What made this attack rather strange was that my only transgression was an announcement of a new External Degree program offering a Bachelor's degree through correspondence. The primary audience for this new program was intended to be labor leaders and activists. I was newly tasked with running this recent initiative by the DLS. I was quoted from news reports as stating, “In the complex environment that we face today, the skills that are needed are difficult to obtain for a union leader unless they go to college” (Gaylor letter 1994).

This statement was seen as such misbehavior that it prompted a letter from John Gaylor, Executive Director of the antiunion Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Indiana to IU President Thomas Ehrlich demanding that the university not use taxpayer's money to support a program giving university degrees to union leaders and members. Gaylor stated that the new degree program

. . . compounds an ongoing concern that much of the research being generated from the Division of Labor Studies is currently biased in supporting the political and economic agenda of organized labor. Personally, I have observed organized labor calling for expert witnesses from the Labor Studies to support their viewpoint many times at public hearings. The line of scientific research objectivity has been crossed many times previously.

Gaylor's letter, which attacked such an innocuous thing as offering a new degree program that extended IU's credit classes to new constituencies through a new medium (correspondence) was not able to locate any vulnerability where the DLS could be seen as possibly stepping over the line of prudence. It was so lacking in internal university salience that the DLS allowed others in the union and political arenas to rise up in its defense. The Executive Director of the Indiana State Building and Construction Trades Council wrote IU President Ehrlich a scathing letter that accused Gaylor's ABC of being nothing but a union-free advocate that routinely flouted U.S. labor law, lied about its apprenticeship program and its minority program and its market share. This letter thanked the university for DLS classes and recommended that Gaylor actually attend some of them to educate himself about their true nature as opposed to his false characterization of them (Ramsey letter 1994).

Politicians also answered Gaylor's letter through letters of their own to the IU President. The Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives defended the IU DLS against Gaylor's attack (Phillips letter 1994), and the Democratic (minority) leader of the Indiana Senate did likewise; he argued that a “bias” toward labor from an academic program focused on labor was actually a good thing and was in any case dwarfed by the bias in the media and the much larger academic program of the IU Business School (Hellman letter 1994).

I left the IU Division of Labor Studies in 1997. The above chronicles the history of attacks on me and through me on the DLS because we had an orientation toward workers and organized labor in our teaching and research activities. While it is not exactly pleasant to be attacked in this manner, it is instructive as to how vulnerable and precarious the position of being a labor educator in a public university can be.

Analysis and Conclusion

This personal remembrance needs to be placed within a broader perspective. The introduction gave an overview of the precarious position of higher education Labor Studies programs up through the 1970s; we now look at the context in the 1980s and 1990s when this case occurred and subsequent developments in the twenty-first century.

The decades of the 1980s and the 1990s were arguably situated at the high point and the beginning of a decline in institutionalized Labor Studies within public higher education. Higher education labor education was no longer expanding as it had in the immediate post World War II era, but rapid decline was not yet happening. I recall the demise of a couple of programs during this time, such as the elimination of a very small program at the University of Kentucky and the defunding and destruction of the Ohio State University program after the Ohio AFL-CIO turned against it through lobbying at the state legislature, but these were isolated incidents and were countered by the growth of other programs such as was the case in California. Thus, this case occurred in a period of some vulnerability but not extreme danger overall to the field. Strong programs in high union-density states like Indiana could thus withstand political attacks of the type illustrated here. But the situation was deteriorating in the 1990s as state funding for universities began to decline and public higher education institutions were told to act more like corporations: raise their own funding and act as “profit centers” (Byrd and Nissen 2003, 66).

By the 2000s and 2010s, the overall atmosphere for labor education within public higher education deteriorated badly. An investigation conducted by Helena Worthen in 2014–2015 found that one extreme danger was the corporatization of institutions of higher education, far more dangerous than simple antiunion animus:

What is more likely to harm a program, but is not a specific attack on labor education per se, is the trend that affects higher education in the United States generally: the push to shift the mission of higher education from providing citizens with the opportunity to get a traditional “good education” for democracy and a good society, to employer-and-industry designed, labor-market driven workforce development and professional vocational programs. This trend is ideologically in alignment with the external and explicitly political attacks and the impact is much larger and more permanent. (Worthen 2015, 11)

In the scramble for survival in an increasingly corporatized university, Labor Studies programs are in double jeopardy. Not only are they useless as money generators for the institution but they also are prime targets for politically motivated attacks. In a 2003 survey of college- and university-based labor educator, a strong majority of respondents viewed the role of labor education as “union advocacy” rather than joint labor-management facilitation or neutrality between workers and management (Byrd and Nissen 2003, 51). Thus, by its very nature, labor studies is bound to be controversial and prone to being attacked by powerful business and conservative interests, simply because devotion to an interest group seen as an obstacle to profitability in a capitalist society where business interests are dominant will inevitably put you in the line of fire.

My personal experience in the 1980s and 1990s happened in a context that was not ideal but was still far preferable to that which most university-based labor education programs face today. Most importantly, state legislatures have continued to cut funding for higher education, putting pressure on them to corporatize: cut programs that cost (like Labor Studies), raise tuition, and expand moneymakers like corporate-funded executive training and Federal government-funded military and basic science grants. The Lincoln Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences found that from 1990 to 2014 state general fund expenditures on higher education fell from 14. 6% to 9.4%, a 35 percent decline (Lincoln Project 2015, 8). And a National Education Association analysis of data showed that state funding for higher education decreased significantly between 2008 and 2020 in 32 states (Flannery 2022).

Given these unfavorable trends, public university-based labor education is in more danger than ever. As programs ponder strategies for survival, it may be instructive to study past examples of threats against continued existence: the context, the nature of the danger, potential allies, avenues of adaptation, and a clear-eyed analysis of the depth of the danger. The stakes are high and the times are urgent.