Mary Ann Caton
On April 25, I attended a campus-wide meeting of faculty and staff regarding the upcoming dismemberment of the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, where I have taught history for 32 years. We are the smallest of the Pitt campuses and the only one that was never permitted to evolve from a two-year degree-granting college to a four-year one. Our dismemberment began in 2011: new programs were denied, repairs of our physical plant were denied. Empty teaching positions were went unfilled. Non-tenured full-time faculty who had been on three year rolling contracts were pulled without notice and put on annual contracts. All that has led to a steep decline in enrollment.
I use the word “dismemberment,” because in January the Pitt Board of Trustees voted to “transform” the campus into a sort of industrial and business training hub. Briefly, that means UPT will be no longer be part of Pitt; we will be turned over to several “partners” who will run the campus on behalf of companies that want training programs for their employees. Our nursing and physical therapy assistant programs will be turned over to the Bradford campus. Our residence halls and our dining hall will be closed. The fate of our library and its collection is not yet known.
What dismemberment means for faculty is that the majority of us will be fired. Indeed, we have already been fired because the “partners” have no further need for most of us who teach in the liberal arts and sciences. The campus mission will be training, not education.
I am not supporting the unionization effort because a union can change this outcome. It’s too late for that. But I am supporting the union in order to give my colleagues and myself a chance to negotiate better severance packages with continuation of health care; without a union, we will be called one at a time into a meeting without representation or counsel and told what our severance package will be. And I believe that leaving a union behind can be our legacy to other Pitt faculty, to give them some leverage over how they are treated by the university.
I encourage all faculty members to sign union authorization cards. We must recognize that faculty are workers who require protection from the corporatization of the university. The only equitable process is to join the USW to negotiate collectively.
--Mary Ann Caton, History and Political Science, Pitt Titusville
I use the word “dismemberment,” because in January the Pitt Board of Trustees voted to “transform” the campus into a sort of industrial and business training hub. Briefly, that means UPT will be no longer be part of Pitt; we will be turned over to several “partners” who will run the campus on behalf of companies that want training programs for their employees. Our nursing and physical therapy assistant programs will be turned over to the Bradford campus. Our residence halls and our dining hall will be closed. The fate of our library and its collection is not yet known.
What dismemberment means for faculty is that the majority of us will be fired. Indeed, we have already been fired because the “partners” have no further need for most of us who teach in the liberal arts and sciences. The campus mission will be training, not education.
I am not supporting the unionization effort because a union can change this outcome. It’s too late for that. But I am supporting the union in order to give my colleagues and myself a chance to negotiate better severance packages with continuation of health care; without a union, we will be called one at a time into a meeting without representation or counsel and told what our severance package will be. And I believe that leaving a union behind can be our legacy to other Pitt faculty, to give them some leverage over how they are treated by the university.
I encourage all faculty members to sign union authorization cards. We must recognize that faculty are workers who require protection from the corporatization of the university. The only equitable process is to join the USW to negotiate collectively.
--Mary Ann Caton, History and Political Science, Pitt Titusville
