Oral Testimony Submitted to the
Maryland Senate Finance Committee
By [Jared Ball, Dr.]
SB 247
State Personnel – Collective Bargaining – Faculty, Part-Time Faculty, and Graduate Assistants
February 16, 2023
FAVORABLE
Greetings to those gathered. My name is Jared Ball and I am currently a tenured full professor at Morgan State University where I have been for almost 18 years. Before that I spent roughly 7 years at both Frostburg State and College Park as both faculty, graduate student, and undergrad giving me 25 years of experience within Maryland higher education, but not necessarily within the university of Maryland system. And it is this last point to which Id like to draw some attention given that it has not been made clear previously here or in my written submission. Specifically, collective bargaining protections must be afforded those of us working within already hostile conditions and who have actually less recourse to address those issues given the insular hierarchy of institutions like Morgan State. Without the ability to collectively bargain individual faculty are left on their own, mostly to languish, quit, or perhaps to bring about their own independent law suit which Morgan has seen plenty of and yet can easily withstand without corrective measures taken.
In addition to the many grievances described by my colleagues here and in my own submitted written testimony is the fact that these copious and well-documented abuses are protected by an existing state university structure and made worse by the fact that we have nowhere else within the university system to go with our concerns. I spent personally the better part of 7 years trying to address every abuse from administrative plagiarism of my work, to arbitrary hiring, firing, pay increases, and an endless list of micro-aggressions designed to destroy spirit and collegiality only to realize that Morgan State has, under the guise of historically Black autonomy and false claims to already shaky concepts of “shared governance,” continued with impunity to scuttle academic freedom, the value of earned rank and seniority, and even due process.
“Shared governance” suggests a balance of power and yet there is none among our faculty whose voice can only be heard when parroting messaging that comes from the president’s office via our “university councils.” This is not sharing, nor is it at least good governance.
I am, therefore, in favor of SB 247 and the support for this long-held human right to collectively bargain. Thank you.
By [Jared Ball, Dr.] re: SB 247 and HB 275
State Personnel – Collective Bargaining – Faculty, Part-Time Faculty, and Graduate Assistants
February 14, 2023
FAVORABLE
Greetings to those gathered. My name is Jared Ball and I am currently a tenured full professor at Morgan State University where we routinely continue to play traditional roles serving students and communities whose experiences as students are themselves non-traditional. The routinization of those “non-traditional” conditions is perhaps a topic for another day, however, it remains that we are duty bound to serve communities often abandoned by society. And yet, many of us faculty feel abandoned by a working relationship with our institution that is not commensurate with what should be by now the basics of 21st century labor relations and which makes the highest levels of job performance impossible.
With more than 20 years teaching at Maryland universities, 17 of which have been at Morgan State, I have seen first-hand the damage caused by the absence of collective bargaining rights. Junior faculty are overrun by course loads, low pay, and few to no benefits while senior faculty are unable to properly negotiate defense or improvement of their own conditions much less those of their less protected colleagues. And while it is certainly true that HBCUs like Morgan suffer gross imbalances in resources compared to their PWI counterparts the absence of genuine representation or bargaining power continues to assure massive discrepancies in distribution of what resources exist.
In my time alone, I have suffered personally or witnessed first-hand having watched my own work plagiarized and submitted for funding, an erasure of any observable criteria for advancement or compensation, Deans with Bachelor degrees running schools where in-field Ph.Ds. are removed for their having any desire for academic freedom, salaries of favored faculty bumped while the rest are told forever to wait for new studies to conclude women and senior faculty are under-paid, faculty openly referred to as “terrorists” for having been born outside the U.S., direct threats of abuse of power by administration, and an endless list of passive aggressive hostilities. Yet, despite all the complaints, meetings, statements, and efforts to address these and so many other concerns, faculty are forced into silence, encouraged to seek employment elsewhere, or are targeted and told directly that, “if I cannot fire you I will make you quit” as was said to me and several others by Dwayne Wickham, a now retired Dean of the School of Communications.
Teaching, learning, and research all are best served by faculty who are themselves supported, confident in their place, properly compensated, and who have the ability to collectively bargain to assure optimum experience for all involved. The quality of research diminishes when faculty are over-worked and under-paid and have no voice to raise and no ability to make themselves heard. The quality of student experience is only enhanced when engaged by faculty who are not exhausted by their third or fourth class of the day, having to come from meetings where they are only threatened into doing more for fear of losing their job, or who have the ability to conduct research and teach in stress-free environments. No labor force should be without an ability to collectively bargain and no one interested in the best results of that labor should stand in the way of this fundamental point.
I am, therefore, in favor of HB 275 and the support for this long-held human right to collectively bargain.