Unions Say Threats To Free Speech, Other Rights A Growing Issue In White-Collar Workplaces

10/23/2002

From: Jamie Horwitz of the American Federation of Teachers, 202-879-4447, jhorwitz@aft.org or Candice Johnson of the Newspaper Guild-CWA, 202-434-1168, cjohnson@CWA-union.org

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 -- In response to growing pressures on the rights of professional employees, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Newspaper Guild-CWA and the Department for Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO (DPE) are joining forces to launch the Professional Rights and Opportunities (PRO) Network. PRO will release periodic reports, hold forums, coordinate public information campaigns and propose model contract language, as well as suggest legislative and regulatory reforms on issues pertaining to the rights of professional employees.

Speaking at the first PRO forum, The Corporate State (of Mind) and Free Expression, held today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., AFT vice president William Scheuerman said, "In order to maintain a free press and a high quality education system, the professionals who work in these institutions need a zone of professional independence and expression."

The zone of free expression in the news media, education and other fields has shifted over time, says Scheuerman. Journalists, professors, engineers and other professional employees increasingly feel threatened by corporate influences in classrooms and newsrooms, technology used to monitor workers, and challenges to academic freedom and intellectual property rights.

Guild president Linda Foley said that in the news media, changes in newspaper ownership have affected the quality of news and the ability of reporters to cover stories. "Our society is built on the premise that a free press is composed of many voices. Having a few large corporate conglomerates control news is potentially dangerous to our democracy."

Among the threats to free expression and professional rights the unions identified are:

-- Proposed changes in FCC rules that would allow a newspaper and television station in the same market to have the same ownership. The FCC has blocked cross-ownership for 27 years but is now considering lifting the ban, a change that would have a dramatic impact on local news by eliminating diverse voices and opinions. A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute stated that "giving any owner an exclusive monopoly over a locality's top news sources might generate more company profits, but has a negative economic, social, cultural and political impact."

-- The growing use of non-tenured part-time faculty in colleges and universities is limiting academic freedom. Today, 43 percent of the nation's college and university faculty are classified as adjuncts or part-timers, up from 20 percent twenty years ago. These academics have little or no job security, and because they are non-tenured are not guaranteed the same academic freedom that has been traditionally granted to full-time professors. In a survey of 250 colleges and universities, Richard P. Chait, professor of higher education at Harvard University, found only 10 had academic freedom policies that protected adjuncts.

-- Limits on scholarly research in colleges and universities by conditional corporate giving. Lawrence Soley, professor of communications at Marquette University and a speaker at the National Press Club event, detailed what he calls "leasing the ivory tower." Soley charges that priorities and research of physics and engineering departments are being influenced by large defense contracts; biology and chemistry departments by drug companies and biotech firms; and computer science departments by chip makers and software firms - a development that has led many universities to place the interests of business ahead of students and basic research.

-- Commercial pressures on K-12 school settings that compromise teaching and open inquiry. Schoolhouse commercialism has increased fourfold in the past decade, reports the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Corporations are sponsoring lesson plans, writing exclusive agreements for sale of merchandise and delivering programming that contains advertising to captive student audiences in return for free electronic equipment.

In addition to today's forum, other issues to be examined in coming months include:

-- Covenants widely used in the broadcast industry that prevent television and radio artists from speaking on programs or in advertisements not produced by the artist's primary employer.

-- The rise of companies such as CleanFlick that electronically alter the film work of actors, writers and directors without approval, often significantly changing the meaning of the work from what the artists initially intended.

-- How the law and technology are changing intellectual property rights for writers, engineers, scientists and public employees.

-- Electronic monitoring of professional workers, including employer monitoring of e-mail messages, voice-mail messages and tracking of Web sites visited.

Professors, nurses, engineers and other professionals are joining the labor movement in record numbers, says Paul Almeida president of the AFL-CIO's Department for Professional Employees. "It should come as little surprise that professional employees are the fastest growing group within organized labor. Professionals are turning to unions to protect their rights as much as they join for bread and butter issues." The DPE will take the lead on coordinating the work of PRO as well as operating the network's Web site, www.dpe-pro.net.

Among the panelists at today's PRO forum were Paul Almeida, DPE president; William Scheuerman, AFT vice president and president of United University Professions at the State University of New York; Linda Foley, Newspaper Guild-CWA president; Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect Magazine; Gary Rhoades, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona; Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy; John Nichols, national correspondent for The Nation; and Janine Jackson, program director for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

DPE represents 23 AFL-CIO unions and 4 million professional, technical and administrative support workers in hundred of occupations in both the public and private sectors.

AFT represents more than 1.2 million pre-K-12 teachers, paraprofessionals and other school support employees, higher education faculty, nurses and other healthcare workers and state and local government employees.

CWA represents more than 700,000 workers in the information and communications industries, including print and broadcast media and publishing, telecommunications, information technology, healthcare and public service.