THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Today's News

Friday, October 2, 1998

Ohio Supreme Court Rejects Law That Barred Faculty Bargaining on Workload

By DENISE K. MAGNER

A divided Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a state law that barred collective bargaining on the issue of faculty workload.

The law, passed in 1993, was primarily intended to increase the amount of time professors at Ohio's public universities spent in the classroom. A study by the Ohio Board of Regents had shown that over the previous decade the amount of time faculty members worked in the classroom had dropped by 10 per cent. Legislators passed the law hoping to shift faculty workloads from research to teaching.

As a result of the law, administrators at Central State University adopted a new workload policy in 1994, and notified the faculty union there that the new rules were not negotiable. Under the policy, the number of hours that professors could spend in class increased from a maximum of 12 per quarter to 15. In May 1995, the Central State chapter of the American Association of University Professors sued.

In a 4-3 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court found that the law violated the equal-protection clauses of the state and U.S. Constitutions. The majority opinion, written by Justice Alice

Robie Resnick, said, "We cannot find any rational basis for singling out university faculty members as the only public employees ... precluded from bargaining over their workload."

Justice Resnick wrote that she did not see "a shred of evidence in the entire record which links collective bargaining with the decline of teaching over the last decade."

The three dissenting justices said the law should be upheld because it relates to a legitimate state interest: improving undergraduate education.

Earl S. Mackey, vice-chancellor for external relations for the Ohio regents, said it was too early to say whether the board would appeal. He said the workload policies passed by the regents were still valid, and could be used during the collective-bargaining process as an expression of the board's opinion about appropriate teaching loads.

Robert L. Marcus, head of the A.A.U.P. chapter at Central State, said he was "ecstatic" about the ruling. "We argued that there were ways to recoup the loss of teaching time, other than passing legislation that would limit faculty's ability to negotiate over working condition," he said. "There was potential in the law for abuse, and that potential was realized here."