Content area
Abstract
Argumentation, as distinct from quarrels and disputes, is a calculated and extended display of rationality, and one that is frequently mediated by such institutions as law or the university. The short history of faculty unionization in the private university setting is narrated, emphasizing the National Labor Relations Board's analysis of the nature of a professional employee in a university setting. The archaeological method of Foucault is then utilized to examine historically the development of labor law in the United States. The industrial (mass production) model of shop floor control predominates in the enonces of U.S. labor law; this model, with its strong emphasis on "management rights", of grading jobs according to their component tasks, of stepwise grievance procedures which focus on the formal interpretation of rules, requires the exclusion of the craft model. This latter emphasizes collaborative management, the linking of wages to the skill of the worker, and resolution of differences by debate rather than protracted grievance hearings. It is suggested that the enunciative formation of the discursive field, Labor Law, will not enable a craft model, and by implication, a "collegial" model, to operate. With this premise, the administration of a union contract between a faculty unit and a private university is examined. Ethnomethodology is utilized to investigate the way in which the concept of a Provost becomes a vehicle for the non-participatory management characteristic of industry. An alternative proposition is addressed, namely, that a faculty union provides an effective alternate to traditional models of governance (Faculty Council or University Senate) when those do not prove viable. This proposition is refuted by an investigation of the efficacy of "argumentation" as it appears in grievance proceedings and subsequent submissions to an arbitrator. The data, approached through the methodology of Conversation Analysis, indicates that the interaction lacks the formal properties of dispute and that the original point of the argument is lost as it is reworked into an enonce of Labor Law. The dissertation concludes with the observation that argumentation combines coercion and inertia; argumentation is a technique of power which protracts and frequently subverts the resolution of a disagreement.
